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ELSIE VENNER 


A ROMANCE OF DESTINY 


BY 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

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BY HER OLDEST SCHOLAR 


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PREFACE. 


This tale was published in successive parts in the “ At- 
lantic Monthly,” under the name of “ The Professor’s 
Story,” the first number having appeared in the third week 
of December, 1859. The critic who is curious in coinci- 
dences must refer to the Magazine for the date of publica- 
tion of the chapter he is examining. 

In calling this narrative a “ romance,” the author wishes 
to make sure of being indulged in the common privileges 
of the poetic license. Through all the disguise of fiction 
a grave scientific doctrine may be detected lying beneath 
some of the delineations of character. He has used this 
doctrine as a part of the machinery of his story without 
pledging his absolute belief in it to the extent to which it 
is asserted or implied. It was adopted as a convenient 
medium of truth rather than as an accepted scientific con- 
clusion. The reader must judge for himself what is the 
value of various stories cited from old authors. He must 
decide how much of what has been told he can accept, either 
as having actually happened, or as possible and more or 
less probable. The author must be permitted, however, to 
say here, in his personal character, and as responsible to 
the students of the human mind and body, that since this 
story has been in progress he has received the most star- 
tling confirmation of the possibility of the existence of a 
character like that which he had drawn as a purely imagi- 
nary conception in Elsie Venner. 

Boston, January, 1861. 


v 



r A SECOND PREFACE. 


This is the story which a dear old lady, my very good 
friend, spoke of as “ a medicated novel,” and quite properly 
refused to read. I was always pleased with her discriminat- 
ing criticism. It is a medicated novel, and if she wished to 
read for mere amusement and helpful recreation there was 
no need of troubling herself with a story written with a 
different end in view. 

This story has called forth so many curious inquiries that 
it seems worth while to answer the more important questions 
which have occurred to its readers. 

In the first place, it is not based on any well-ascertained 
physiological fact. There are old fables about patients who 
have barked like dogs or crowed like cocks, after being 
bitten or wounded by those animals. There is nothing 
impossible in the idea that Romulus and Remus may have 
imbibed wolfish traits of character from the wet nurse leg- 
end assigned them, but the legend is not sound history, and 
the supposition is nothing more than a speculative fancy. 
Still, there is a limbo of curious evidence bearing on the 
subject of prenatal influences sufficient to form the starting 
point of an imaginative composition. 

The real aim of the story was to test the doctrine of 
u original sin ” and human responsibility for the disordered 
volition coming under that technical denomination. Was 
Elsie Venner, poisoned by the venom of a cro talus before 
she was born, morally responsible for the “ volitional ” 
aberrations, which translated into acts become what is 
known as sin, and, it may be, what is punished as crime? 
If, on presentation of the evidence, she becomes by the 
verdict of the human conscience a proper object of divine 
pity, and not of divine wrath, as a subject of moral poison- 
ing, wherein lies the difference between her position at the 
bar of judgment, human or divine, and that of the unfortu- 
nate victim who received a moral poison from a remote 
ancestor before he drew his first breath? 

vii 


Vlll 


A SECOND PREFACE. 


It might be supposed that the character of Elsie Venner 
was suggested by some of the fabulous personages of class- 
ical or mediaeval story. I remember that a French critic 
spoke of her as cette pauvre Melusine. I ought to have 
been ashamed, perhaps, but I had not the slightest idea who 
Melusina was until I hunted up the story, and found that 
she was a fairy, who for some offense was changed every 
Saturday to a serpent from her waist downward. I was, of 
course, familiar with Keats’s Lamia, another imaginary 
being, the subject of magical transformation into a serpent. 
My story was well advanced before Hawthorne’s wonderful 
“Marble Faun,” which might be thought to have furnished 
me with the hint of a mixed nature, — human, with an alien 
element, — was published or known to me. So that my poor 
heroine found her origin, not in fable or romance, but in 
a physiological conception, fertilized by a theological dogma. 

I had the dissatisfaction of enjoying from a quiet corner 
a well-meant effort to dramatize “Elsie Venner.” Unfortu- 
nately, a physiological romance, as I knew beforehand, is 
hardly adapted for the melodramatic efforts of stage repre- 
sentation. I can therefore say, with perfect truth, that I 
was not disappointed. It is to the mind, and not to the 
senses, that such a story must appeal, and all attempts to 
render the character and events objective on the stage, or 
to make them real by artistic illustrations, are almost of 
necessity failures. The story has won the attention and 
enjoyed the favor of a limited class of readers, and if it 
still continues to interest others of the same tastes and 
habits of thought I can ask nothing more of it. 

January 23, 1883. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Brahmin Caste of New England, . . 1 

II. The Student and His Certificate, ... 5 

III. Mr. Bernard Tries His Hand, .... 16 

IV. The Moth Flies into the Candle, * . . .30 

V. An Old-fashioned Descriptive Chapter, . . 39 

VI. The Sunbeam and the Shadow, .... 50 

VII. The Event of the Season, 59 

VIII. The Morning After, 87 

IX. The Doctor Orders the Best Sulky, . . 99 

X. The Doctor Calls on Elsie Venner, . . 103 

XI. Cousin Richard’s Visit, 110 

XII. The Apollinean Institute, . . . .121 

XIII. Curiosity, 131 

XIV. Family Secrets, 142 

XV. Physiological, 150 

XVI. Epistolary, 161 

XVII. Old Sophy Calls on the Reverend Doctor, . 172 
XVIII. The Reverend Doctor Calls on Brother Fair- 

weather, 185 

XIX. The Spider on His Thread, .... 192 

XX. From Without and from Within, . . /. 202 

XXI. The Widow Rowens Gives a Tea-Party, . .211 

XXII. Why Doctors Differ, 231 

XXIII. The Wild Huntsman, 243 

XXIV. On His Tracks, 253 

XXV. The Perilous Hour 262 

XXVI. The News Reaches the Dudley Mansion, . 281 


X 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XXVII. A Soul in Distress, 295 

XXVIII. Tiie Secret is Whispered, .... 303 

XXIX. The White Ash 322 

XXX. The Golden Cord is Loosed, .... 330 

XXXI. Mr. Silas Peckham Renders His Account, . 342 
XXXII. Conclusion, . 355 


ELSIE YENNER 


CHAPTER I. 

THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND. 

There is nothing in New England corresponding at all 
to the feudal aristocracies of the Old World. Whether it 
be owing to the stock from which we were derived, or to 
the practical working of our institutions, or to the abroga- 
tion of the technical “ law of honor,” which draws a sharp 
line between the personally responsible class of “ gentlemen ” 
and the unnamed multitude of those who are not expected 
to risk their lives for an abstraction, — whatever be the cause, 
we have no such aristocracy here as that which grew up out 
of the military systems of the Middle Ages. 

What we mean by “ aristocracy ” is merely the richer part 
of the community, that live in the tallest houses, drive real 
carriages, (not “ kerridges,”) kid-glove their hands, and 
Erench-bonnet their ladies’ heads, give parties where the 
persons who call them by the above title are not invited, 
and have a provokingly easy way of dressing, walking, talk- 
ing, and nodding to people, as if they felt entirely at home, 
and would not be embarrassed in the least, if they met the 
Governor, or even the President of the United States, face 
to face. Some of these great folks are really well-bred, 
some of them are only purse-proud and assuming, — but they 
form a class, and are named as above in the common speech. 

It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish rapidly, 
when subdivided and distributed. A million is the unit 
of wealth, now and here in America. It splits into four 
handsome properties; each of these into four good inherit- 
ances; these, again, into scanty competences for four ancient 
maidens, — with whom it is best the family should die out, 
unless it can begin again as its great-grandfather did. Now 


2 


ELSIE VENNER. 


a million is a kind of golden cheese, which represents in 
a compendious form the summer’s growth of a fat meadow 
of craft or commerce; and as this kind of meadow rarely 
bears more than one crop, it is pretty certain that sons and 
grandsons will not get another golden cheese out of it* 
whether they milk the same cows or turn in new ones. In 
other words, the millionocracy, considered in a large w T ay, 
is not at all an affair of persons and families, but a per- 
petual fact of money with a variable human element, which 
a philosopher might leave out of consideration without fall- 
ing into serious error. Of course, this trivial and fugitive 
fact of personal wealth does not create a permanent class, 
unless some special means are taken to arrest the process, 
of disintegration in the third generation. This is so rarely 
done, at least successfully, that one need not live a very 
long life to see most of the rich families he knew in child- 
hood more or less reduced, and the millions shifted into the 
hands of the country-boys who were sweeping stores and 
carrying parcels when the now decayed gentry were driving 
their chariots, eating their venison over silver chafing- 
dishes, drinking Madeira chilled in embossed coolers, wear- 
ing their hair in powder, and casing their legs in long 
boots with silken tassels. 

There is, however, in New England, an aristocracy, if you 
choose to call it so, which has a far greater character of 
permanence. It has grown to be a caste, — not in any odious 
sense, — but, by the repetition of the same influences, gen- 
eration after generation, it has acquired a distinct organ- 
ization and physiognomy, which not to recognize is mere 
stupidity, and not to be willing to describe would show a 
distrust of the good-nature and intelligence of our readers, 
who like to have us see all we can and tell all we see. 

If you will look carefully at any class of students in one 
of our colleges, you will have no difficulty in selecting speci- 
mens of two different aspects of youthful manhood. Of 
course I shall choose extreme cases to illustrate the contrast 
between them. In the first, the figure is perhaps robust,, 
but often otherwise, — inelegant, partly from careless atti- 
tudes, partly from ill-dressing, — the face is uncouth in fea- 
ture, or at least common, — the mouth coarse and unformed, 
— the eye unsympathetic, even if bright, — the movements 
of the face are clumsy, like those of the limbs, — ’the voice: 


THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND. 3 


is unmusical, — and the enunciation as if the words were 
coarse castings instead of fine caryings. The youth of the 
other aspect is commonly slender, — his face is smooth, and 
apt to be pallid, — his features are regular and of a certain 
delicacy, — his eye is bright and quick, — his lips play over 
"the thought he utters as a pianist’s fingers dance over their 
music, — and his whole air, though it may be timid, and 
even awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a teacher, 
you know what to expect from each of these young men. 
With equal willingness, the first will be slow at learning; 
the second will take to his books as a pointer or a setter to 
his field-work. 

The first youth is the common country-boy, whose race 
has been bred to bodily labor. Nature has adapted the 
family organization to the kind of life it has lived. The 
hands and feet by constant use have got more than their 
share of development, — the organs of thought and expres- 
sion less than their share. The finer instincts are latent 
and must be developed. A youth of this kind is raw ma- 
terial in its first stage of elaboration. You must not expect 
too much of any such. Many of them have force of will 
and character, and become distinguished in practical life; 
hut very few of them ever become great scholars. A scholar 
is, in a large proportion of cases, the son of scholars or 
scholarly persons. 

That is exactly what the other young man is. He comes 
of the Brahmin caste of New England. This is the harmless, 
inoffensive, untitled aristocracy referred to, and which many 
readers will at once acknowledge. There are races of schol- 
ars among us, in which aptitude for learning, and all these 
marks of it I have spoken of, are congenital and hereditary. 
Their names are always on some college catalogue or other. 
They break out every generation or two in some learned 
labor which calls them up after they seem to have died out. 
At last some newer name takes their place, it may be, — but 
you inquire a little and you find it is the blood of the 
Edwardses or the Chaunceys or the Ellerys or some of the 
old historic scholars, disguised under the altered name of 
a female descendant. 

There probably is not an experienced instructor anywhere 
in our Northern States who will not recognize at once the 
“truth of this general distinction. But the reader who has 


4 


ELSIE VENNER. 


never been a teacher will very probably object, that some of 
our most illustrious public men have come direct from the 
homespun-clad class of the people, — and he may, perhaps, 
even find a noted scholar or two whose parents were masters 
of the English alphabet, but of no other. 

It is not fair to pit a few chosen families against the great 
multitude of those who are continually working their way 
up into the intellectual classes. The results which are 
habitually reached by hereditary training are occasionally 
brought about without it. There are natural filters as well 
as artificial ones; and though the great rivers are commonly 
more or less turbid, if you will look long enough, you may 
find a spring that sparkles as no water does which drips 
through your apparatus of sands and sponges. So there are 
families which refine themselves into intellectual aptitude 
without having had much opportunity for intellectual ac- 
quirements. A series of felicitous crosses develops an im- 
proved strain of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection 
at last in the large uncombed youth who goes to college and 
startles the hereditary class-leaders by striding past them all. 
That is Nature’s republicanism; thank God for it, but do 
not let it make you illogical. The race of the hereditary 
scholar has exchanged a certain portion of its animal vigor- 
for its new instincts, and it is hard to lead men without 
a good deal of animal vigor. The scholar who comes by" 
Nature’s special grace from an unworn stock of broad- 
chested sires and deep-bosomed mothers must always over- 
match an equal intelligence with a compromised and lowered 
vitality. A man’s breathing and digestive apparatus (one is 
tempted to add muscular) are just as important to him on 
the floor of the Senate as his thinking organs. You broke 
down in your great speech, did you? Yes, your grandfather 
had an attack of dyspepsia in ’82, after working too hard 
on his famous Election Sermon. All this does not touch 
the main fact : our scholars come chiefly from a privileged 
order, just as our best fruits come from well-known grafts,, 
— though now and then a seedling apple, like the Northern 
Spy, or a seedling pear, like the Seckel, springs from a 
nameless ancestry and grows to be the pride of all the gar- 
dens in the land. 

Let me introduce you to a young man who belongs to the 
Brahmin caste of New England. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE. 

Bernard C. Langdon, a young man attending Medical 
Xectures at the school connected with one of our principal 
colleges, remained after the lecture one day and wished to 
speak with the professor. He was a student of mark, — first 
favorite of his year, as they say of the Derby colts. There 
are in every class half a dozen bright faces to which the 
teacher naturally directs his discourse, and by the inter- 
mediation of whose attention he seems to hold that of the 
mass of listeners. Among these some one is pretty sure 
to take the lead, by virtue of a personal magnetism, or some 
peculiarity of expression, which places the face in quick 
sympathetic relations with the lecturer. This was a young 
man with such a face; and I found, — for you have guessed 
that I was the “ professor” above-mentioned, — that when 
there was anything difficult to be explained, or when I was 
bringing out some favorite illustration of a nice point, (as, 
for instance, when I compared the cell-growth, by which 
Nature builds up a plant or an animal, to the glass blower’s 
similar mode of beginning, — always with a hollow sphere, 
or vesicle, whatever he is going to make,) I naturally looked 
in his face and gauged my success by its expression. 

It was a handsome face, — a little too pale, perhaps, and 
would have borne something more of fullness without becom- 
ing heavy. I put the organization to which it belongs in 
Section B of Class 1 of my Anglo-American Anthropology 
(unpublished). The jaw in this section is but slightly nar- 
rowed, — just enough to make the width of the forehead tell 
more decidedly. The mustache often grows vigorously, but 
the whiskers are thin. The skin is like that of Jacob, rather 
than like Esau’s. One string of the animal nature has been 
taken away, but this gives only a greater predominance to 
the intellectual chords. To see just how the vital energy 
has been toned down, you must contrast one of this section 
with a specimen of Section A of the same class, — say, for 

5 


6 


ELSIE VENNER. 


instance, one of the old-fashioned, full-whiskered, red- 
faced, roaring, big commodores of the last generation, whom 
you remember, at least by their portraits, in ruffled shirts* 
looking as hearty as butchers and as plucky as bull-terriers,, 
with their hair combed straight up from their foreheads, 
which were not commonly very high or broad. The special 
form of physical life I have been describing gives you a 
right to expect more delicate perceptions and a more re- 
flective nature than you commonly find in shaggy-throated 
men, clad in heavy suits of muscles. 

The student lingered in the lecture-room, looking all the 
time as if he wanted to say something in private, and wait- 
ing for two or three others, who were still hanging about* 
to be gone. 

Something is wrong! — I said to myself, when I noticed 
his expression. — “ Well, Mr. Langdon,” — I said to him, when 
we were alone , — >u can I do anything for you to-day ? ” 

“ You can, sir,” he said. “ I am going to leave the class* 
for the present, and keep school.” 

“ Why, that’s a pity, and you so near graduating! You’d 
better stay and finish this course, and take your degree in 
the spring, rather than break up your whole plan of study.” 

“ I can’t help myself, sir,” the young man answered. 
“ There’s trouble at home, and they cannot keep me here 
as they have done. So I must look out for myself for a 
while. It’s what I’ve done before, and am ready to da 
again. I came to ask you for a certificate of my fitness to 
teach a common school, or a high school, if you think I 
am up to that. Are you willing to give it to me ?” 

“ Willing? Yes, to be sure; but I don’t want you to go. 
Stay; we’ll make it easy for you. There’s a fund will do 
something for you, perhaps. Then you can take both the 
annual prizes if you like, — and claim them in money, if 
you want that more than medals.” 

“ I have thought it all over,” he answered, “ and have 
pretty much made up my mind to go.” 

A perfectly gentlemanly young man, of courteous address 
and mild utterance, but means at least as much as he says. 
There are some people whose rhetoric consists of a slight 
habitual understatement. I often tell Mrs. Professor that 
one of her “ I think it’s sos ” is worth the Bible-oath of 
all the rest of the household that they “ know it’s so.” When 


THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE. T 

you find a person a little better than his word, a little more- 
liberal than his promise, a little more than borne out in his 
statement by his facts, a little larger in deed than in speech*, 
you recognize a kind of eloquence in that person’s utterance 
not laid down in Blair or Campbell. 

This was a proud fellow, self-trusting, sensitive, with 
family-recollections that made him unwilling to accept 
the kind of aid which many students would have thankfully 
welcomed. I knew him too well to urge him, after the few 
words which implied that he was determined to go. Besides,. 
I have great confidence in young men who believe in them- 
selves, and are accustomed to rely on their own resources, 
from an early period. When a resolute young fellow steps, 
up to the great bully, the World, and takes him boldly by the 
beard, he is often surprised to find it come off in his hand* 
and that it was only tied on to scare away timid adventurers. 
I have seen young men more than once, who came to a great 
city without a single friend, support themselves and pay for 
their education, lay up money in a few years, grow rich 
enough to travel, and establish themselves in life, without, 
ever asking a dollar of any person which they had not earned. 
But these are exceptional cases. There are horse-tamers* 
bom so, as we all know; there are woman-tamers who be- 
witch the sex as the pied piper bedeviled the children of 
Hamelin; and there are world-tamers, who can make any 
community, even a Yankee one, get down and let them jump 
on its back as easily as Mr. Rarey saddled Cruiser. 

Whether Iangdoi? was of this sort or not I could not say 
positively; but he had spirit, and, as I have said, a family- 
pride which would not let him be dependent. The New 
England Brahmin caste often gets blended with connections 
of political influence or commercial distinction. It is a 
charming thing for the scholar, when his fortune carries 
him in this way into some of the “ old families ” who have 
fine old houses, and city-lots that have risen in the market, 
and names written in all the stock-books of all the dividend- 
paying companies. His narrow study expands into a stately 
library, his books are counted by thousands instead of hun- 
dreds, and his favorites are dressed in gilded calf in place 
of plebeian sheepskin or its pauper substitutes of cloth and 
paper. 

The Reverend J edediah Langdon, grandfather of our 


ELSIE VENNER. 


8 

young gentleman, had made an advantageous alliance of this 
kind. Miss Dorothea Wentworth had read one of his ser- 
mons which had been printed “ by request/’ and became 
deeply interested in the young author, whom she had never 
seen. Out of this circumstance grew a correspondence, an 
interview, a declaration, a matrimonal alliance, and a 
family of half a dozen children. Wentworth Langdon, 
Esq., was the oldest of these, and lived in the old family- 
mansion. Unfortunately, that principle of the diminution 
of estates by division, to which I have referred, rendered it 
somewhat difficult to maintain the establishment upon the 
fractional income which the proprietor received from his 
share of the property. Wentworth Langdon, Esq., repre- 
sented a certain intermediate condition of life not at all 
infrequent in our old families. He was the connecting link 
between the generation which lived in ease, and even a kind 
of state, upon its own resources, and the new brood, which 
must live mainly by its wits or industry, and make itself 
rich, or shabbily subside into that lower stratum known 
to social geologists by a deposit of Kidderminster carpets 
and the peculiar aspect of the fossils constituting the family 
furniture and wardrobe. This slack-water period of a race, 
which comes before the rapid ebb of its prosperity, is fa- 
miliar to all who live in cities. There are no more quiet, in- 
offensive people than these children of rich families, just 
above the necessity of active employment, yet not in a condi- 
tion to place their own children advantageously if they hap- 
pen to have families. Many of them are content to live 
unmarried. Some mend their broken fortunes by prudent 
alliances, and some leave a numerous progeny to pass into 
the obscurity from which their ancestors emerged; so that 
you may see on handcarts and cobblers’ stall names which, 
a few generations back, were upon parchment^ with broad 
■seals, and tombstones with armorial bearings. 

In a large city, this class of citizens is familiar to us in 
the streets. They are very courteous in their salutations; 
they have time enough to bow and take their hats off, — 
which, of course, no business-man can afford to do. Their 
Learers are smoothly brushed, and their boots well polished; 
all their appointments are tidy; they look the respectable 
walking gentleman to perfection. They are prone to habits, 
— they frequent reading-rooms, insurance-offices, — they walk 


THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE. 


9 * 

the same streets at the ^same hours, — so that one becomes, 
familiar with their faces and persons, as a part of the street- 
furniture. 

There is one curious circumstance, that all city-people 
must have noticed, which is often illustrated in our experi- 
ence of the slack-water gentry. We shall know a certain 
person by his looks, familiarly, for years, but never have 
learned his name. About this person we shall have accumu- 
lated no little circumstantial knowledge ; — thus his f ace* 
figure, gait, his mode of dressing, of saluting, perhaps even 
of speaking may be familiar to us; yet who he is we know 
not. In another department of our consciousness, there is a. 
very familiar name, which we have never found the person, 
to match. We have heard it so often, that it has idealized 
itself, and become one of that multitude of permanent shapes 
which walk the chambers of the brain in velvet slippers in 
the company of FalstafF and Hamlet and General Washing- 
ton and Mr. Pickwick. Sometimes the person dies, but the 
name lives on indefinitely. But now and then it happens, 
perhaps after years of this independent existence of the: 
name and its shadowy image in the brain, on the one part, 
and the person and all its real attributes, as we see them 
daily, on the other, that some accident reveals their relation, 
and we find the name w-e have carried so long in our memory 
belongs to the person we have known so long as a fellow- 
citizen. How the slack-water gentry are among the personsr 
most likely to be the subjects of this curious divorce of title 
and reality, — for the reason, that, playing no important part 
in the community, there is nothing to tie the floating name, 
to the actual individual, as is the case with the men wha 
belong in any way to the public, while yet their names have 
a certain historical currency, and we cannot help meeting- 
them, either in their haunts, or going to and from them. 

To this class belonged Wentworth Langdon, Esq. He had 
been “ dead-headed ” into the world some fifty years ago, 
and had sat with his hands in his pockets staring at the 
show ever since. I shall not tell you, for reasons before 
hinted, the whole name of the place in which he lived. I 
will only point you in the right direction, by saying that 
there are three towns lying in a line with each other, as you 
go “ down East,” each of them with a Port in its name, and 
each of them having a peculiar interest which gives it in- 


10 


ELSIE VENNER. 


■ciividuality, in addition to the Oriental character they have 
in common. I need not tell you that these towns are New- 
buryport, Portsmouth, and Portland. The Oriental char- 
acter they have in common consists in their large, square, 
palatial mansions, with sunny gardens around them. The 
two first have seen better days. They are in perfect har- 
mony with the condition of weakened, but not impoverished, 
gentility. Each of them is a “ paradise of demi-fortunes.” 
Each of them is of that intermediate size between a village 
and a city which any place has outgrown when the presence 
of a well-dressed stranger walking up and down the main 
street ceases to be a matter of public curiosity and private 
speculation, as frequently happens, during the busier months 
of the year, in considerable commercial centers like Salem. 
They both have grand old recollections to fall back upon, — 
times when they looked forward to commercial greatness, 
and when the portly gentlemen in cocked hats, who built 
their now decaying wharves and sent out their ships all over 
the world, dreamed that their fast-growing port was to be 
the Tyre or the Carthage of the rich British Colony. 
Great houses, like that once lived in by Lord Timothy Dex- 
ter, in Newburyport, remain as an evidence of the fortunes 
amassed in these places of old. Other mansions — like the 
Rockingham House in Portsmouth (look at the white horse’s 
tail before you mount the broad staircase) show that there 
was not only wealth, but style and state, in these quiet old 
towns during the last century. It is not with any thought 
of pity or depreciation that we speak of them as in a certain 
sense decayed towns ; they did not fulfill their early promise 
of expansion, but they remain incomparably the most inter- 
esting places of their size in any of the three northernmost 
New England States. They have even now prosperity enough 
to keep them in good condition, and offer the most attractive 
residences for quiet families, which, if they had been Eng- 
lish, would have lived in a palazzo at Genoa or Pisa, or some 
other Continental Newburyport or Portsmouth. 

As for the last of the three Ports, or Portland, it is getting 
too prosperous to be as attractive as its less northerly neigh- 
bors. Meant for a fine old town, to ripen like a Cheshire 
-cheese within its walls of ancient rind, burrowed by crooked 
alleys and mottled with venerable mold, it seems likely to 
.sacrifice its mellow future to a vulgar material prosperity. 


THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE. 


II 


Still it remains invested with many of its old charms, as yet,, 
and will forfeit its place among this admirable trio only 
when it gets a hotel with unequivocal marks of having been 
built and organized in the present century. 

It was one of the old square palaces of the North, in 

which Bernard Langdon, the son of Wentworth, was born. 
If he had had the luck to be an only child, he might have 
lived as his father had done, letting his meager competence 
smolder on almost without consuming, like the fuel in an 
air-tight stove. But after Master Bernard came Miss Doro- 
thea Elizabeth Wentworth Langdon, and then Master Wil- 
liam Pepperell Langdon, and others, equally well named, — 
a string of them, looking, when they stood in a row in prayer- 
time, as if they would fit a set of Pandean pipes, of from 
three feet upward in dimensions. The door of the air-tight 
stove has to be opened, under such circumstances, you may 
well suppose! So it happened that our young man had 
been obliged, from an early period, to do something to sup- 
port himself, and found himself stopped short in his studies 
by the inability of the good people at home to furnish him 
the present means of support as a student. 

You will understand now why the young man wanted me 
to give him a certificate of his fitness to teach, and why I 
did not choose to urge him to accept the aid which a meek 
country boy from a family without ante-Revolutionary recol- 
lections would have thankfully received. Go he must, — 
that was plain enough. He would not be content otherwise^ 
He was not, however, to give up his studies ; and as it is cus- 
tomary to allow half-time to students engaged in school- 
keeping, — that is, to count a year, so employed, if the student 
also keep on with his professional studies, as equal to six 
months of the three years he is expected to be under an in- 
structor before applying for his degree, — he would not neces- 
sarily lose more than a few months of time. He had a small 
library of professional books, which he could take with him. 

So he left my teaching and that of my estimable colleagues,, 
carrying with him my certificate, that Mr. Bernard C. Lang- 
don was a young gentleman of excellent moral character* 
of high intelligence and good education, and that his ser- 
vices would be of great value in any school, academy, or 
other institution, where young persons of either sex were to 
be instructed. 


12 


ELSIE VENNER. 


I confess, that expression, “ either sex,” ran a little thick, 
as I may say, from my pen. For, although the young man 
bore a very fair character, and there was no special cause 
for doubting his discretion, I considered him altogether too 
good-looking, in the first place, to be let loose in a room full 
of young girls. I didn’t want him to fall in love just then, 
— and if half a dozen girls fell in love with him, as they 
most assuredly would, if brought into too near relations with 
him, why, there was no telling what gratitude and natural 
;sensibility might bring about. 

Certificates are, for the most part, like ostrich-eggs; the 
giver never knows what is hatched out of them. But once 
in a thousand times they act as curses are said to, — come 
home to roost. Give them often enough, until it gets to be 
a mechanical business, and, some day or other, you will get 
caught warranting somebody’s ice not to melt in any climate, 
or somebody’s razors to be safe in the hands of the youngest 
children. 

I had an uneasy feeling, after giving this certificate. It 
might be all right enough; but if it happened to end badly, 
I should always reproach myself. There was a chance, cer- 
tainly, that it would lead him or others into danger or 
wretchedness. Anyone who looked at this young man could 
not fail to see that he was capable of fascinating and being 
fascinated. Those large, dark eyes of his would sink into 
the white soul of a young girl as the black cloth sunk into 
the snow in Franklin’s famous experiment. Or, on the other 
hand, if the rays of a passionate nature should ever be con- 
centrated on them, they would be absorbed into the very 
depths of his nature, and then his blood would turn to flame 
and burn his life out of him, until his cheeks grew as white 
as the ashes that cover a burning coal. 

I wish I had not said “ either sex ” in my certificate. An 
academy for young gentlemen, now ; that sounds cool and un- 
imaginative. A boys’ school ; that would be a very good place 
for him; — some of them are pretty rough, but there is nerve 
•enough in that old Wentworth strain of blood; he can give 
any country fellow, of the common stock, twenty pounds, 
and hit him out of time in ten minutes. But to send such 
a young fellow as that out a girl’s-nesting ! to give this fal- 
con a free pass into all the dove-cotes ! I was a fool, — that’s 
all. 


THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE. 


13 


I brooded over the mischief which might come out of these 
two words until it seemed to me that they were charged with 
destiny. I could hardly sleep for thinking what a train I 
might have been laying, which might take a spark any day* 
and blow up nobody knows whose peace and prospects. What 
I dreaded most was one of those miserable matrimonial mis- 
alliances where a young fellow who does not know himself 
as yet flings his magnificent future into the checked apron- 
lap of some fresh-faced, half-bred country-girl, no more fit 
to be mated with him than her father’s horse to go in 
double harness with Flora Temple. To think of the eagle’s, 
wing being clipped so that he shall never lift himself over 
the farm-yard fence ! Such things happen, and always must- 
— because, as one of us said a while ago, a man always loves 
a woman, and a woman a man, unless some good reason 
exists to the contrary. You think yourself a very fastidious 
young man, my friend; but there are probably at least five* 
thousand young women in these United States, any one of 
whom you would certainly marry, if you were thrown much 
into her company, and nobody more attractive were near* 
and she had no objection. And you, my dear young lady* 
justly pride yourself on your discerning delicacy; but if I 
should say that there were twenty thousand young men, any 
one of whom, if he offered his hand and heart under favor- 
able circumstances, you would 

“First endure, then pity, then embrace.” 

I should be much more imprudent than I mean to be, and 
you would, no doubt, throw down a story in which I hope to 
interest you. 

I had settled it in my mind that this young fellow had a 
career marked out for him. He should begin in the natural 
way, by taking care of poor patients in one of the public 
charities, and work his way up to a better kind of practice* 
— better, that is, in the vulgar, worldly sense. The great and 
good Boerhaave used to say, as I remember very well, that 
the poor were his best patients ; for God was their paymaster. 
But everybody is not as patient as Boerhaave, nor as deserv- 
ing; so that the rich, though not, perhaps, the best patients* 
are good enough for common practitioners. I suppose Boer- 
haave put up with them when he could not get poor ones* 
as he left his daughter two millions of florins when he died. 


14 


ELSIE VENNER. 


Now if this young man once got into the wide streets, 
he would sweep them clear of his rivals of the same stand- 
ing; and as I was getting indifferent to business, and old 
Dr. Kilham was growing careless, and had once or twice pre- 
scribed morphine when he meant quinine, there would soon 
be an opening into the Doctor’s Paradise, — the streets with 
only one side to them. Then I would have him strike a bold 
stroke, — set up a nice little coach, and be driven round like 
a first-class London doctor, instead of coasting about in a 
shabby one-horse concern and casting anchor opposite his 
patients’ doors like a Cape-Ann fishing-smack. By the time 
he was thirty, he would have knocked the social pawns out 
of his way, and be ready to challenge a wife from the row of 
great pieces in the background. I would not have a man 
marry above his level, so as to become the appendage of a 
powerful family-connection; but I would not have him marry 
until he knew his level, — that is, again, looking at the mat- 
ter in a purely worldly point of view, and not taking the 
sentiments at all into consideration. But remember, that 
a young man, using large endowments wisely and fortu- 
nately, may put himself on a level with the highest in the 
land in ten brilliant years of spirited, unflagging labor. And 
to stand at the very top of your calling in a great city is 
-something in itself, — that is, if you like money and influence, 
and a seat on the platform at public lectures, and gratuitous 
tickets to all sorts of places where you don’t want to go, and, 
what is a good deal better than any of these things, a sense 
•of power, limited, it may be, but absolute in its range, so 
that all the Caesars and Napoleons would have to stand aside, 
if they came between you and the exercise of your special 
vocation. 

That is what I thought this young fellow might have 
come to ; and now I have let him go off into the country with 
my certificate, that he is fit to teach in a school for either 
sex! Ten to one he will run like a moth into a candle, right 
into one of those girls’-nests, and get tangled up in some 
sentimental folly or other^and there will be the end of him. 
Oh, yes ! country doctor, — half a dollar a visit, — drive, drive, 
drive all day, — get up at night and harness your own horse, 
— drive again ten miles in a snow-storm, — shake powders out 
of two phials, (pulv. glycyrrhiz., pulv. gum. acac. aa partes 
oquales,) — drive back again, if you don’t happen to get 


THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE. 


15 


stuck in a drift, — no home, no peace, no continuous meals, 
no unbroken sleep, no Sunday, no holiday, no social inter- 
course, but one eternal jog, jog, jog, in a sulky, until you 
feel like the mummy of an Indian who had been buried in 
the sitting posture, and was dug up a hundred years after- 
wards ! Why didn’t I warn him about love and all that non- 
sense? Why didn’t I tell him he had nothing to do with 
it, yet awhile? Why didn’t I hold up to him those awful 
examples I could have cited, where poor young fellows who 
could just keep themselves afloat have hung a matrimonial 
millstone round their neoks, taking it for a life-preserver? 

All this of two words in a certificate! 


CHAPTER III. 


MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND. 

Whether the Student advertised for a school, or whether 
he fell in with the advertisement of a school-committee, is 
not certain. At any rate, it was not long before he found 
himself the head of a large district, or, as it was called 
by the inhabitants, “ deestric ” school, in the flourishing in- 
land village of Pequawkett, or, as it is commonly spelt, Pig- 
wacket Center. The natives of this place would be sur- 
prised, if they should hear that any of the readers of a work 
published in Boston were unacquainted with so remarkable 
a locality. As, however, some copies of it may be read at 
a distance from this distinguished metropolis, it may be well 
to give a few particulars respecting the place, taken from 
the Universal Gazetteer. 

Pigwacket, sometimes spelt Pequawkett. A post-village and town- 
ship in Co., State of , situated in a fine agricultural region, 2 

thriving villages. Pigwacket Center and Smithville, 3 churches, several 
Bchoolhouses, and many handsome private residences. Mink River runs 
through the town, navigable for small boats after heavy rains. Muddy 
Pond at N. E. section, well stocked with horn pouts, eels, and shiners. 
Products, beef, pork, butter, cheese. Manufactures, shoe-pegs, clothes- 
pins, and tin-ware. Pop. 1373. 

The reader may think there is nothing very remarkable- 
implied in this description. If, however, he had read the 
town-history, by the Rev. Jabez Grubb, he would have 
learned, that, like the celebrated Little Pedlington, it was 
distinguished by many very remarkable advantages. Thus : — 

The situation of Pigwacket is eminently beautiful, looking down the 
lovely valley of Mink River, a tributary of the Musquash. The air is salu- 
brious, and many of the inhabitants have attained great age, several 
having passed the allotted period of “three-score years and ten ” before 
succumbing to any of the various “ills that flesh is heir to.” Widow Com- 
fort Leevins died in 1836, Mi. LXXXVII. years. Venus, an African, died 
in 1841, supposed to be C. years old. The people are distinguished for 
intelligence, as has been frequently remarked by eminent lyceum-lecturers,,. 
who have invariably spoken in the highest terms of a Pigwacket audience. 

16 


MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND. 17 

"There is a public library, containing nearly a hundred volumes, free to all 
•subscribers. The preached word is well attended, there s a flourishing 
temperance society, and the schools are excellent. It is a residence admir- 
ably adapted to refined families who relish the beauties of Nature and the 
-charms of society. The honorable John Smith, formerly a member of 
'the State Senate, was a native of this town. 


That is the way they all talk. After all, it is probably 
pretty much like other inland New England towns in point 
<of “ salubrity,” — that is, gives people their choice of dysen- 
tery or fever every autumn, with a season-ticket for consump- 
tion, good all the year round. And so of the other pretenses. 
M Pigwacket audience,” forsooth! Was there ever an audi- 
ence anywhere, though there wasn’t a pair of eyes in it 
brighter than pickled oysters, that didn’t think it was “ dis- 
tinguished for intelligence ” ? — “ The preached word ” ! 
That means the Pev. Jabez Grubb’s sermons. u Temperance 
society ” ! “ Excellent schools ” ! Ah, that is just what we 
were talking about. 

The truth was, that District No. 1, Pigwacket Center, had 
had a good deal of trouble of late with its schoolmasters. 
The committee had done their best, but there were a number 
of well-grown and pretty rough young fellows who had got 
the upper hand of the masters, and meant to keep it. Two 
•dynasties had fallen before the uprising of this fierce de- 
mocracy. This was a thing that used to be not very uncom- 
mon ; but in so “ intelligent ” a community as that of 
Pigwacket Center, in an era of public libraries and lyceum- 
lectures, it was portentous and alarming. 

The rebellion began under the ferule of Master Weeks, a 
slender youth from a country college, under-fed, thin- 
blooded, sloping-shouldered, knock-kneed, straight-haired, 
weak-bearded, pale-eyed, wide-pupilled, half-colored; a com- 
mon type enough in in-door races, not rich enough to pick 
and choose in their alliances. Nature kills off a good many 
of this sort in the first teething-time, a few in later child- 
hood, a good many again in early adolescence; but every 
now and then one runs the gantlet of her various diseases, 
or rather forms of one disease, and grows up, as Master 
Weeks had done. 

It was a very foolish thing for him to try to inflict per- 
sonal punishment on such a lusty young fellow as Abner 
Driggs, Junior, one of the “ hardest customers ” in the way 


18 


ELSIE VENNER. 


of a rough-and-tumble fight that were anywhere round. No* 
doubt he had been insolent, but it would have been better to 
overlook it. It pains me to report the events which took 
place when the master made his rash attempt to maintain 
his authority. Abner Briggs, Junior, was a great hulking 
fellow, who had been bred to butchering, but urged by his 
parents to attend school, in order to learn the elegant accom- 
plishments of reading and writing, in which he was sadly de- 
ficient. He was in the habit of talking and laughing pretty 
loud in school-hours, of throwing wads of paper reduced to 
a pulp by a natural and easy process, of occasional insolence 
and general negligence. One of the soft, but unpleasant mis- 
siles just alluded to, flew by the master’s head one morning, 
and flattened itself against the wall, where it adhered in the 
form of a convex mass in alto rilievo. The master looked 
round and saw the young butcher’s arm in an attitude which 
pointed to it unequivocally as the source from which the 
projectile had taken its flight. 

Master Weeks turned pale. He must “lick” Abner 
Briggs, Junior, or abdicate. So he determined to lick Abner 
Briggs, Junior. 

“ Come here, Sir ! ” he said ; “ you have insulted me and 
outraged the decency of the school-room often enough ! 
Hold out your hand ! ” 

The young fellow grinned and held it out. The master 
struck at it with his black ruler, with a will in the blow and 
a snapping of the eyes, as much as to say that he meant to 
make him smart this time. The young fellow pulled his 
hand back as the ruler came down, and the master hit himself 
a vicious blow on the right knee. There are things no man 
can stand. The master caught the refractory youth by the 
collar and began shaking him, or rather shaking himself, 
against him. 

“ Le’ go o’ that are coat, naow,” said the fellow, “ or I’ll 
make ye! ’T’ll take tew on ye t’ handle me, I tell ye, ’n’ 
then ye caant dew it ! ” — and the young pupil returned the 
master’s attention by catching hold of his collar. 

When it comes to that, the best man, not exactly in the 
moral sense, but rather in the material, and more especially 
the muscular point of view, is very apt to have the best of 
it, irrespectively of the merits of the case. So it happened 
now. The unfortunate schoolmaster found himself taking: 


MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND. 


19 


The measure of the sanded floor, amidst the general uproar 
of the school. From that moment his ferule was broken, and 
the school-committee very soon had a vacancy to fill. 

Master Pigeon, the successor of Master Weeks, was of bet- 
ter stature, but loosely put together, and slender-limbed. A 
dreadfully nervous kind of man he was, walked on tiptoe, 
^started at sudden noises, was distressed when he heard a 
whisper, had a quick, suspicious look, and was always saying, 
“ Hush ! ” and putting his hands to his ears. The boys were 
not long in finding out this nervous weakness, of course. 
In less than a week a regular system of torments was in- 
augurated, full of the most diabolical malice and ingenuity. 
The exercises of the conspirators varied from day to day, but 
consisted mainly of foot-scraping, solos on the slate-pencil, 
(making it screech on the slate,) falling of heavy books, at- 
tacks of coughing, banging of desk-lids, boot-creaking, with 
•sounds as of drawing a cork from time to time, followed by 
suppressed chuckles. 

Master Pigeon grew worse and worse under these inflic- 
tions. The rascally boys always had an excuse for any one 
Trick they were caught at. “ Couldn’ help coughin’, Sir.” 

Slipped out o’ m’ han’. Sir.” “ Didn’ go to, Sir.” “ Didn’ 
dew ’t o’ purpose, Sir.” And so on, — always the best of rea- 
sons for the most outrageous behavior. The master weighed 
himself at the grocer’s on a platform balance, some ten days 
after he began keeping the school. At the end of a week he 
weighed himself again. He had lost two pounds. At the 
•end of another week he had lost five. He made a little cal- 
culation, based on these data, from which he learned that in 
a certain number of months, going on at this rate, he should 
come to weigh precisely nothing at all ; and as this was a sum 
in subtraction he did not care to work out in practice, Mas- 
ter Pigeon took to himself wings and left the school-commit- 
tee in possession of a letter of resignation and a vacant place 
to fill once more. 

This was the school to which Mr. Bernard Langdon found 
himself appointed as master. He accepted the place condi- 
tionally, with the understanding that he should leave it at 
the end of a month, if he were tired of it. 

The advent of Master Langdon to Pigwacket Center cre- 
ated a much more lively sensation than had attended that 
-of either of his predecessors. Looks go a good way all the 


20 


ELSIE VENNEK. 


world over, and though there were several good-looking peo- 
ple in the place, and Major Bush was what the natives of the> 
town called a “ hahnsome mahn,” that is, big, fat, and red,, 
yet the sight of a really elegant young fellow, with the 
natural air which grows up with carefully-bred young per- 
sons, was a novelty. The Brahmin blood which came from 
his grandfather as well as from his mother, a direct" 
descendant of the old Flynt family, well known by the fa- 
mous tutor, Henry Flynt, (see Cat. Harv. Anno 1693,) had’ 
been enlivened and enriched by that of the Wentworths,, 
which had had a good deal of ripe old Madeira and other • 
generous elements mingled with it, so that it ran to gout 
sometimes in the old folks and to high spirit, warm com- 
plexion, and curly hair in some of the younger ones. The 
soft curling hair Mr. Bernard had inherited, — something, 
perhaps, of the high spirit; but that we shall have a chance- 
of finding out by-and-by. But the long sermons and the 
frugal board of his Brahmin ancestry, with his own habits- 
of study, had told upon his color, which was subdued to 
something more of delicacy than one would care to see in & 
young fellow with rough work before him. This, however r 
made him look more interesting, or, as the young ladies at 
Major Bush’s said, “ interestin’.” 

When Mr. Bernard showed himself at meeting, on the 
first Sunday after his arrival, it may be supposed that a 
good many eyes were turned upon the young schoolmaster. 
There was something heroic in his coming forward so readily 
to take a place which called for a strong hand, and a prompt,, 
steady will to guide it. In fact, his position was that of 
a military chieftain on the eve of a battle. Everybody 
knew everything in Pigwacket Center; and it was an under- 
stood thing that the young rebels meant to put down the new 
master, if they could. It was natural that the two prettiest 
girls in the village, called in the local dialect, as nearly as 
our limited alphabet will represent it, Alminy Cutterr, and 
Arvilly Braowne, should feel and express an interest in the 
good-looking stranger, and that, when their flattering com- 
ments were repeated in the hearing of their indigenous- 
admirers, among whom were some of the older “ boys ” of 
the school, it should not add to the amiable disposition of 
the turbulent youth. 

Monday came, and the new schoolmaster was in his chair- 


MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND. 


21 


;at the upper end of the schoolhouse, on the raised platform. 
The rustics looked at his handsome face, thoughtful, peace- 
ful, pleasant, cheerful, but sharply cut round the lips and 
proudly lighted about the eyes. The ringleader of the mis- 
chief-makers, the young butcher who has before figured in 
this narrative, looked at him stealthily, whenever he got a 
chance to study him unobserved; for the truth was, he felt 
uncomfortable, whenever he found the large, dark eyes fixed 
on his own little, sharp, deep-set, gray ones. But he man- 
aged to study him pretty well — first his face, then his neck 
and shoulders, the set of his arms, the narrowing at the loins, 
the make of his legs, and the way he moved. In short, he 
examined him as he would havjp examined a steer, to see 
what he could do and how he would cut up. If he could 
only have gone to him and felt of his muscles, he would have 
been entirely satisfied. He was not a very wise youth, but 
he did know well enough, that though big arms and legs are 
very good things, there is something besides size that goes 
to make a man ; and he had heard stories of a fighting-man, 
called “ The Spider,” from his attenuated proportions, who 
was yet a terrible hitter in the ring, and had whipped many a 
big-limbed fellow, in and out of the roped arena. 

Nothing could be smoother than the way in which every- 
thing went on for the first day or two. The new master was 
'So kind and courteous, he seemed to take everything in such 
a. natural easy way, that there was no chance to pick a quar- 
rel with him. He in the mean time thought it best to watch 
the boys and young men for a day or two with as little show 
of authority as possible. It was easy enough to see that he 
would have occasion for it before long. 

The schoolhouse was a grim, old, red, one-story building, 
perched on a bare rock at the top of a hill, — partly because 
this was a conspicuous site for the temple of learning, and 
partly because land is cheap where there is no chance even 
for rye or buckwheat, and the very sheep find nothing to 
nibble. About the little porch were carved initials and dates, 
at various heights, from the stature of nine to that of 
eighteen. Inside were old unpainted desks, — unpainted, but 
browned with the umber of human contact, — and hacked by 
innumerable jack-knives. It was long since the walls had 
been whitewashed, as might be conjectured from the various 
ia*aces left upon them, wherever idle hands or sleepy heads 


22 


ELSIE VENNER. 


could reach them. A curious appearance was noticeable on- 
various higher parts of the wall, namely, a wart-like erup- 
tion, as one would be tempted to call it, being in reality a 
crop of the soft missiles before mentioned, which, adhering; 
in considerable numbers, and hardening after the usual 
fashion of papier mache, formed at last permanent orna- 
ments of the edifice. 

The young master’s quick eye soon noticed that a partic- 
ular part of the wall was most favored with these ornamental 
appendages. Their position pointed sufficiently clearly to 
the part of the room they came from. In fact, there was a 
nest of young mutineers just there, which must be broken up 
by a coup d’etat. This was easily affected by redistributing the 
seats and arranging the scholars according to classes, so that 
a mischievous fellow, charged full of the rebellious impon- 
derable, should find himself between two non-conductors, in 
the shape of small boys of studious habits. It was managed 
quietly enough, in such a plausible sort of way that its mo- 
tive was not thought of. But its effects were soon felt ; and 
then began a system of correspondence by signs, and the 
throwing of little scrawls done up in pellets, and announced 
by preliminary a’h’ms! to call the attention of the distant- 
youth addressed. Some of these were incendiary documents,. 

devoting the schoolmaster to the lower divinities, as “ a 

stuck-up dandy,” as “ a purse-proud aristocrat,” as a 

“ sight too big for his,” etc., and holding him up in a 

variety of equally forcible phrases to the indignation of the 
youthful community of School District No. 1, Pigwacket 
Center. 

Presently the draughtsman of the school set a caricature; 
in circulation, labeled, to prevent mistakes, with the school- 
master’s name. An immense bell-crowned hat, and a long, 
pointed swallow-tailed coat showed that the artist had in his 
mind the conventional dandy, as shown in prints of thirty 
or forty years ago, rather than any actual human aspect of 
the time. But it was passed round among the boys and 
made its laugh, helping of course to undermine the master’s 
authority, as “ Punch ” or the “ Charivari ” takes the dignity 
out of an obnoxious minister. One morning, on going to 
the schoolroom. Master Langdon found an enlarged copy of 
this sketch, with its label, pinned on the door. He took it. 
down, smiled a little, put it into his pocket, and entered 


MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND. 


2 £ 


the schoolroom. An 'insidious silence prevailed, which, 
looked as if some plot were brewing. The boys were ripe for 
mischief, but afraid. They had really no fault to find with 
the master, except that he was dressed like a gentleman „ 
which a certain class of fellows always consider a personal 
insult to themselves. But the older ones were evidently 
plotting, and more than once the warning a’h’m! was heard, 
and a dirty little scrap of paper rolled into a wad shot from 
one seat to another. One of these happened to strike the 
stove-funnel, and lodged on the master’s desk. He was cool 
enough not to seem to notice it. He secured it, however,, 
and found an opportunity to look at it, without being ob- 
served by the boys. It required no immediate notice. 

He who should have enjoyed the privilege of looking upon 
Mr. Bernard Langdon the next morning, when his toilet was 
about half finished, would have had a very pleasant gratui- 
tous exhibition. First he buckled the strap of his trousers- 
pretty tightly. Then he took up a pair of heavy dumb-bells,, 
and swung them for a few minutes; then two great “ Indian 
clubs,” with which he enacted all sorts of impossible-looking- 
feats. His limbs were not very large, nor his shoulders 
remarkably broad; but if you knew as much of the muscles 
as all persons who look at statues and pictures with a critical 
eye ought to have learned, — if you knew the trapezius, lying- 
diamond-shaped over the back and shoulders like a monk’s 
cowl, — or the deltoid, which caps the shoulder like an epau- 
let, — or the triceps, which furnishes the calf of the upper 
arm, — or the hard-knotted biceps, — any of the great sculp- 
tural landmarks, in fact, — you would have said there was a 
pretty show of them, beneath the white satiny skin of Mr.. 
Bernard Langdon. And if you had seen him, when he had 
laid down the Indian clubs, catch hold of a leather strap 
that hung from the beam of the old-fashioned ceiling, and 
lift and lower himself over and over again by his 
left hand alone, you might have thought it a very simple 
and easy thing to do, until you tried to do it yourself. Mr.- 
Bernard looked at himself with the eye of an expert. 
“ Pretty well ! ” he said ; “ not so much fallen off as I ex- 
pected.” Then he set up his bolster in a very knowing sort 
of way, and delivered two or three blows straight as rulers 
and swift, as winks. “ That will do,” he said. Then, as if 
determined to make a certainty of his condition, he took a 


24 


ELSIE VENNER. 


dynamometer from one of the drawers in his old veneered 
bureau. First he squeezed it with his two hands. Then he 
placed it on the floor and lifted, steadily, strongly. The 
springs creaked and cracked; the index swept with a great 
. stride far up into the high figures of the scale ; it was a good 
lift. He was satisfied. He sat down on the edge of his bed 
and looked at his cleanly-shaped arms. “ If I strike one 
of those boobies, I am afraid I shall spoil him,” he said. 
Yet this young man, when weighed with his class at the 
college, could barely turn one hundred and forty-two 
pounds in the scale, — not a heavy weight, surely; but some 
of the middle weights, as the present English champion, for 
instance, seem to be of a far finer quality of muscle than 
the bulkier fellows. 

The master took his breakfast with a good appetite that 
morning, but was perhaps rather more quiet than usual. 
After breakfast he went upstairs and put on a light loose 
frock, instead of that which he commonly wore, which was 
a close-fitting and rather stylish one. On his way to school 
he met Alminy Cutterr, who happened to be walking in the 
other direction. “ Good morning, Miss Cutter,” he said ; for 
she and another young lady had been introduced to him, on 
a former occasion, in the usual phrase of polite society in 
presenting ladies to gentlemen, — “ Mr. Langdon, let me make 
. y’ acquainted with Miss Cutterr; — let me make y’ ac- 
quainted with Miss Braowne.” So he said, “ Good-morn- 
ing ” ; to which she replied, “ Good-mornin’, Mr. Langdon. 
Haow’s your haalth?” The answer to this -question ought 
naturally to have been the end of the talk; but Alminy 
Cutterr lingered and looked as if she had something more 
on her mind. 

A young fellow does not require a great experience to 
read a simple country-girl’s face as if it were a signboard. 
Alminy was a good soul, with red cheeks and bright eyes, 
kind-hearted as she could be, and it was out of the question 
for her to hide her thoughts or feelings like a fine lady. 
Her bright eyes were moist and her red cheeks paler than 
their wont, as she said, with her lips quivering, — “ Oh, Mr. 
Langdon, them boys ’ll be the death of ye, if ye don’t take 
caar ! ” 

“ Why, what’s the matter, my dear ? ” said Mr. Bernard. 
Don’t think there was anything very odd in that “ my dear,” 


ME. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND. 25 - 

at the second interview with a village belle ; — some of thes&* 
woman-tamers call a girl “My dear,” after five minutes’* 
acquaintance, and it sounds all right as they say it. But 
you had better not try it at a. venture. 

It sounded all right to Alminy, as Mr. Bernard said it- 
“ 1 11 t e H ye what’s the mahtterr,” she said, in a frightened 
voice. “ Ahbner’s go’n’ to car’ his dog, ’n’ he’ll set him on 
ye ’z sure ’z y’ ’r’ alive. ’T ’s the same cretur that haaf eat 
up Eben Squires’s little Jo, a year come nex’ Faast-day.” 

Now this last statement was undoubtedly over-colored; as^. 
little Jo Squires was running about the village, — with an 
ugly scar on his arm, it is true, where the beast had caught 
him with his teeth, on the occasion of the child’s taking- 
liberties with him, as he had been accustomed to do with 
a good-tempered Newfoundland dog, who seemed to like 
being pulled and hauled round by children. After this the- 
creature was commonly muzzled, and, as he was fed on raw 
meat chiefly, was always ready for a fight, — which he was. 
occasionally indulged in, when anything stout enough te* 
match him could be found in any of the neighboring villages.. 

Tiger, or, more briefly, Tige, the property of Abner Briggs,, 
Junior, belonged to a species not distinctly named in scien- 
tific books, but well known to our country-folks under the- 
name “Yallah dog.” They do not use this expression as-, 
they would say black dog or white dog, but with almost as- 
definite a meaning as when they speak of a terrier or a 
spaniel. A “ yallah dog,” is a large canine brute, of a dingy 
old-flannel color, of no particular breed except his own, who 
hangs round a tavern or a butcher’s shop, or trots alongside* 
of a team, looking as if he were disgusted with the world, 
and the world with him. Our inland population, while they 

tolerate him, speak of him with contempt. Old , of’ 

Meredith Bridge, used to twit the sun for not shining on 
cloudy days, swearing, that, if he hung up his “ yallah dog,” ' 
he would make a better show of daylight. A country fel- 
low, abusing a horse of his neighbor’s, vowed, that, “ if he 
had such a hoss, he’d swap him for a ‘yallah dog,’ — and 
then shoot the dog.” 

Tige was an ill-conditioned brute by nature, and art had 
not improved him by cropping his ears and tail and invest- 
ing him with a spiked collar. He bore on his person, also*, 
various not ornamental scars, marks of old battles; for Tige 


26 


ELSIE VENKER. 


had fight in him, as was said before, and as might be guessed 
by a certain bluntness about the muzzle, with a projection 
of the lower jaw, which looked as if there might be a bull- 
dog stripe among the numerous bar-sinisters of his lineage. 

It was hardly fair, however, to leave Alminy Cutterr 
waiting while this piece of natural history was telling. As 
she spoke of little Jo, who had been “ haaf eat up ” by Tige, 
she could not contain her sympathies, and began to cry. 

“ Why, my dear little soul,” said Mr. Bernard, “ what are 
you worried about? I used to play with a bear when I was 
a boy; and the bear used to hug me, and I used to kiss him, 
so!” 

It was too bad of Mr. Bernard, only the second time he 
'had seen Alminy; but her kind feelings had touched him, 
and that seemed the most natural way of expressing his 
.gratitude. Alminy looked round to see if anybody was 
near; she saw nobody, so of course it would do no good to 

holler.” She saw nobody; but a stout young fellow, lead- 
ing a yellow dog, muzzled, saw her through a crack in a 
picket fence, not a great way off the road. Many a year he 
had been “ hangin’ ’raoun’ ” Alminy, and never did he see 
any encouraging look, or hear any “ Behave, naow ! ” or 

Come, naow, a’n’t ye ’shamed ? ” or other forbidding phrase 
•of acquiescence,- such as village belles understand as well as 
over did the nymph who fled to the willows in the eclogue 
we all remember. 

No wonder he was furious, when he saw the schoolmaster, 
who had never seen the girl until within a week, touching 
with his lips those rosy cheeks which he had never dared to 
approach. But that was all; it was a sudden impulse; and 
the master turned away from the young girl, laughing, and 
telling her not to fret herself about him, — he would take 
■care of himself. 

So Master Langdon walked on toward his schoolhouse, not 
^displeased, perhaps, with his little adventure, nor immensely 
elated by it; for he was one of the natural class of the sex- 
subduers and had had many a smile without asking, which 
"had been denied to the feeble youth who try to win favor 
by pleading their passion in rhyme, and even to the more 
^formidable approaches of young officers in volunteer com- 
panies, considered by many to be quite irresistible to the 
rfair who have once beheld them from their windows in the 


MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND. 2 T 

epaulets and plumes and sashes of the “ Pigwacket In- 
visibles, ” or the “ Hackmatack Rangers.” 

Master Langdon took his seat and began the exeroises of 
his school. The smaller boys recited their lessons well 
enough, but some of the larger ones were negligent and 
surly. He noticed one or two of them looking toward the 
door, as if expecting somebody or something in that direc- 
tion. At half -past nine o’clock, Abner Briggs, Junior, who 
had not yet shown himself, made his appearance. He was 
followed by his “ yallah dog,” without his muzzle, who 
squatted down very grimly near the door, and gave a wolfish 
look round the room, as if he were considering which was. 
the plumpest boy to begin with. The young butcher, mean- 
while, went to his seat, looking somewhat flushed, except 
round the lips, which were hardly as red as common, and 
set pretty sharply. 

“ Put out that dog, Abner Briggs ! ” The master spoke- 
as the captain speaks to the helmsman, when there are rocks 
foaming at the lips, right under his lee. 

Abner Briggs answered as the helmsman answers, whem 
he knows he has a mutinous crew round him that mean to 
run the ship on the reef, and is one of the mutineers him- 
self. “ Put him aout y’self, ’f ye a’n’t afeard on him ! ” 

The master stepped into the aisle. The great cur showed, 
his teeth, and the devilish instincts of his old wolf-ancestry 
looked out of his eyes, and flashed from his sharp tusks, and 
yawned in his wide mouth and deep red gullet. 

The movements of animals are so much quicker than those 
of human beings commonly are, that they avoid blows as 
easily as one of us steps out of the way of an ox-cart. It 
must be a very stupid dog that lets himself be run over by 
a fast driver in his gig; he can jump out of the wheel’s way 
after the tire has already touched him. So, while one is 
lifting a stick to strike or drawing back his foot to kick, 
the beast makes his spring, and the blow or the kick comes 
too late. 

It was not so this time. The master was a fencer, and 
something of a boxer; he had played at single-stick, and was 
used to watching an adversary’s eye and coming down on 
him without any of those premonitory symptoms by which 
unpracticed persons show long beforehand what mischief: 
they meditate. 


28 


ELSIE VENNER. 


“ Out with you ! ” he said, fiercely, and explained what he 
meant by a sudden flash of his foot that clashed the yellow 
-dog’s white teeth together like the springing of a bear-trap. 
The cur knew he had found his master at the first word and 
glance, as low animals on four legs, or a smaller number, 
always do; and the blow took him so by surprise, that it 
curled him up in an instant, and he went bundling out of 
the open schoolhouse-door with a most pitiable yelp, and 
his stump of a tail shut down as close as his owner ever shut 
the short, stubbed blade of his jack-knife. 

It was time for the other cur to find who his master was. 

“ F ollow your dog, Abner Briggs ! ” said Master Langdon. 

The stout butcher-youth looked round, but the rebels were 
all cowed and sat still. 

“ I’ll go when I’m ready,” he said, “ ’n’ I guess I won’t go 
afore I’m ready.” 

“ You’re ready now,” said Master Langdon, turning up 
his cuffs so that the little boys noticed the yellow gleam of 
a pair of gold sleeve-buttons, once worn by Colonel Percy 
Wentworth, famous in the Old French War. 

Abner Briggs, Junior, did not apparently think he was 
ready, at any rate; for he rose up in his place, and stood 
with clenched fists, defiant, as the master strode towards 
him. The master knew the fellow was really frightened, 
for all his looks, and that he must have no time to rally. 
So he caught him suddenly by the collar, and, with one 
great pull, had him out over his desk and on the open floor. 
He gave him a sharp fling backwards and stood looking at 
him. 

The rough-and-tumble fighters all clinch, as everybody 
knows; and Abner Briggs, Junior, was one of that kind. 
He remembered how he had floored Master Weeks, and he 
had just “ spunk ” enough left in him to try to repeat his 
former successful experiment on the new master. He sprang 
at him, open-handed, to clutch him. So the master had to 
strike, — once, but very hard," and just in the place to tell. 
Ho doubt, the authority that doth hedge a schoolmaster 
added to the effect of the blow; but the blow was itself a 
neat one, and did not require to be repeated. 

“ Now go home,” said the master, “ and don’t let me see 
you or your dog here again.” And he turned his cuffs down 
■over the gold sleeve-buttons. 


MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND. 


29 ' 


This finished the great Pigwacket Center School rebellion.. 
What could be done with a master who was so pleasant as. 
long as the boys behaved decently, and such a terrible fellow 
when he got “ riled,” as they called it ? In a week’s time 
everything was reduced to order, and the school-committee 
were delighted. The master, however, had received a prop- 
osition: so much more agreeable and advantageous, that he 
informed the committee he should leave at the end of his 
month, having in his eye a sensible and energetic young 
college-graduate who would be willing and fully competent 
to take his place. 

So, at the expiration of the appointed time, Bernard Lang- 
don, late master of the School District No. 1, Pigwacket 
Center, took his departure from that place for another lo- 
cality, whither we shall follow him, carrying with him the 
regrets of the committee, of most of the scholars, and of 
several young ladies ; also two locks of hair, sent unbeknown 
to payrents, one dark and one warmish auburn, inscribed 
with the respective initials of Alminy Cutterr and Arvilly 
Braown*. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE MOTH FLIES INTO THE CANDLE. 

The invitation which Mr. Bernard Langdon had accepted 
►came from the Board of Trustees of the “ Apollinean Fe- 
male Institute,” a school for the education of young ladies, 
situated in the flourishing town of Rockland. This was an 
establishment on a considerable scale, in which a hundred 
-scholars or thereabouts were taught the ordinary English 
branches, several of the modern languages, something of 
Latin, if desired, with a little natural philosophy, meta- 
physics, and rhetoric, to finish off with in the last year, and 
music at any time when they would pay for it. At the close 
of their career in the Institute, they were submitted to a 
grand public examination, and received diplomas tied in 
blue ribbons, which proclaimed them with a great flourish 
of capitals to be graduates of the Apollinean Female Insti- 
tute. 

Rockland was a town of no inconsiderable pretensions. 
It was ennobled by lying at the foot of a mountain, — called 
by the working-folks of the place “ the Maounting,” — which 
sufficiently showed that it was the principal high land of 
the district in which it was situated. It lay to the south 
of this, and basked in the sunshine as Italy stretches herself 
before the Alps. To pass from the town of Tamarack on 
the north of the mountain to Rockland on the south was like 
crossing from Coire to Chiavenna. 

There is nothing gives glory and grandeur and romance 
and mystery to a place like the impending presence of a 
high mountain. Our beautiful Northampton with its fair 
meadows and noble stream is lovely enough, but owes its 
surpassing attraction to those twin summits which brood 
over it like living presences, looking down into its streets 
as if they were its tutelary divinities, dressing and undress- 
ing their green shrines, robing themselves in jubilant sun- 
shine or in sorrowing clouds, and doing penance in the snowy 
.shroud of winter, as if they had living hearts under their 


THE MOTH ELIES INTO THE CANDLE. 


31 


rocky ribs and changed their mood like the children of the 
«oil at their feet, who grow up under their almost parental 
smiles and frowns. Happy is the child whose first dreams 
of heaven are blended with the evening glories of Mount 
Holyoke, when the sun is firing its treetops, and gilding 
the white walls that mark its one human dwelling! If the 
other and the wilder of the two summits has a scowl of 
terror in its overhanging brows, yet is it a pleasing fear to 
look upon its savage solitudes through the barred nursery- 
windows in the heart of the sweet, companionable village. 
And how the mountains love their children! The sea is of 
a facile virtue, and will run to kiss the first comer in any 
port he visits; but the chaste mountains sit apart, and show 
their faces only in the midst of their own families. 

The mountain which kept watch to the north of Rock- 
land lay waste and almost inviolate through much of its 
domain. The catamount still glared from the branches of 
its old hemlocks on the lesser beasts that strayed beneath 
Jiim. It was not long since a wolf had wandered down, 
famished in the winter’s dearth, and left a few bones and 
some tufts of wool of what had been a lamb in the morning. 
Hay, there were broad-footed tracks in the snow only two 
;years previously, which could not be mistaken; the black 
bear alone could have set that plantigrade seal, and little 
children must come home early from school and play, for he 
is an indiscriminate feeder when he is hungry, and a little 
child would not come amiss when other game was wanting. 

But these occasional visitors may have been mere wan- 
derers, which, straying along in the woods by day, and per- 
haps stalking through the streets of still villages by night, 
had worked their way along down from the ragged moun- 
tain-spurs of higher latitudes. The one feature of The 
^Mountain that shed the brownest horror on its woods was 
the existence of the terrible region known as Rattlesnake 
Ledge, and still tenanted by those damnable reptiles, which 
distill a fiercer venom under our cold northern sky than the 
cobra himself in the land of tropical spices and poisons. 

From the earliest settlement of the place, this fact had 
been, next to the Indians, the reigning nightmare of the 
inhabitants. It was easy enough, after a time, to drive 
away the savages ; for “ a screeching Indian Divell,” as our 
fathers called him, could not crawl into the crack of a rock 


32 


ELSIE VENNER. 


to escape from his pursuers. But the venomous population? 
of Rattlesnake Ledge had a Gibraltar for their fortress that 
might have defied the siege-train dragged to the walls of 
Sebastopol. In its deep embrasures and its impregnable; 
casemates they reared their families, they met in love or 
wrath, they twined together in family knots, they hissed de- 
fiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hibernated, and in due 
time died in peace. Many a foray had the town’s-people made, 
and many a stuffed skin was shown as a trophy, — nay, there 1 
were families where the children’s first toy was made from.' 
the warning appendage that once vibrated to the wrath of’ 
one of these “ cruel serpents.” Sometimes one of them,, 
coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the; 
hillside into the roads, up the walks that led to houses, — 
worse than this, into the long grass, where the bare-footed 
mowers would soon pass with their swinging scythes, — more 
rarely into houses, — and on one memorable occasion, early 
in the last century, into the meeting house, where he took: 
a position on the pulpit-stairs, as narrated in the “ Account 
of Some Remarkable Providences,” etc., where it is sug- 
gested that a strong tendency of the Rev. Didymus Bean,, 
the Minister at that time, towards the Arminian Heresy may 
have had something to do with it, and that the Serpent 
supposed to have been killed on the Pulpit-Stairs was a false 
show of the Daemon’s Contrivance, he having come in to> 
listen to a Discourse which was a sweet Savour in his Nos- 
trils, and, of course, not being capable of being killed Him- 
self. Others said, however, that, though there was good 
Reason to think it was a Daemon, yet he did not come with: 
Intent to bite the Heel of that faithful Servant, — etc. 

One Gilson is said to have died of the bite of a rattle- 
snake in this town early in the present century. After this 
there was a great snake-hunt, in which very many of these* 
venomous beasts were killed, — one in particular, said to have- 
been as big round as a stout man’s arm, and to have had 
no less than forty joints to his rattle, — indicating, according 
to some, that he had lived forty years, but, if we might put 
any faith in the Indian tradition, that he had killed forty 
human beings, — an idle fancy, clearly. This hunt, however, 
had no permanent effect in keeping down the serpent popu- 
lation. Viviparous creatures are a kind of specie-paying 
lot, but oviparous ones only give their notes, as it were,. 


THE MOTH FLIES INTO THE CANDLE. 33 

:for a future brood, — an egg being, so to speak, a promise to 
pay a young one by-and-by, if nothing happen. Now the 
domestic habits of the rattlesnake are not studied very 
closely, for obvious reasons; but it is, no doubt, to all in- 
tents and purposes, oviparous. Consequently it has large 
families, and is not easy to kill out. 

In the year 184 — , a melancholy proof was afforded to the 
inhabitants of Rockland, that the brood which infested The 
Mountain was not extirpated. A very interesting young 
married woman, detained at home at the time by the state 
■of her health, was bitten in the entry of her own house by 
a rattlesnake which had found its way down from The 
Mountain. Owing to the almost instant employment of 
powerful remedies, the bite did not prove immediately fatal; 
but she died within a few months of the time when she was 
bitten. 

All this seemed to throw a lurid kind of shadow over The 
Mountain. Yet, as many years passed without any accident, 
people grew comparatively careless, and it might rather be 
said to add a fearful kind of interest to the romantic hill- 
side, that the banded reptiles, which had been the terror of 
the red men for nobody knows how many thousand years, 
were there still, with the same poison-bags and spring-teeth 
at the white men’s service, if they meddled with them. 

The other natural features of Rockland were such as 
many of our pleasant country towns can boast of. A brook 
•came tumbling down the mountain-side, and skirted the 
most thickly settled portion of the village. In the parts of 
its course where it ran through the woods, the water looked 
almost as brown as coffee flowing from its urn, — to say like 
smoky quartz would perhaps give a better idea, — but in the 
open plain it sparkled over the pebbles white as a queen’s 
diamonds. There were huckleberry-pastures on the lower 
flanks of The Mountain, with plenty of the sweet-scented 
Rayberry mingled with the other bushes. In other fields 
grew great store of high-bush blackberries. Along the road- 
side were barberry-bushes, hung all over with bright red 
•coral pendants in autumn and far into the winter. Then 
there were swamps set thick with dingy alders, where the 
three-leaved arum and the skunk’s-cabbage grew broad and 
succulent, — shelving down into black boggy pools here and 
there, at the edge of which the green frog, stupidest of hi? 


34 


ELSIE VENNER. 


tribe, sat waiting to be victimized by boy or »napping-turtle 
long after the shy and agile leopard-frog had taken the six- 
foot spring that plumped him into the middle of the pool.. 
And on the neighboring banks the maiden-hair spread its 
flat disk of embroidered fronds on the wire-like stem that, 
glistened polished and brown as the darkest tortoise-shell,, 
and pale violets, cheated by the cold skies of their hues and 
perfume, sunhed themselves like white-cheeked invalids. 
Over these rose the old forest-trees, — the maple, scarred with, 
the wounds which had drained away its sweet life-blood, — 
the beech, its smooth gray bark mottled so as to look like- 
the body of one of those great snakes of old that used to 
frighten armies, — always the mark of lovers’ knives, as in 
the days of Musidora and her swain, — the yellow birch, 
rough as the breast of Silenus in old marbles, — the wild 
cherry, its little bitter fruit lying unheeded at its foot, — 
and soaring over all, the huge, coarse-barked, splintery- 
limbed, dark-mantled hemlock, in the depth of whose aerial 
solitudes the crow brooded on her nest unscared, and the 
gray squirrel lived unharmed till his incisors grew to look 
like ram’s-horns. 

Rockland would have been but half a town without its 
pond; Quinnepeg Pond was the name of it, but the young 
ladies of the Apollinean Institute were very anxious that it 
should be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that the 
young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; 
here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented good-for-nothing, 
lazy, story-telling, half -vagabonds, who sawed a little' wood 
or dug a few potatoes now and then under the pretense of 
working for their living, used to go and fish through the ice 
for pickerel every winter. And here those three young 
people were drowned, a few summers ago, by the upsetting 
of a sail-boat in a sudden flaw of wind. There is not one of 
these smiling ponds which has not devoured more youths, 
and maidens than any of those monsters the ancients used 
to tell such lies about. But it was a pretty pond, and never 
looked more innocent — so the native “ bard ” of Rockland 
said in his elegy — than on the morning when they found 
Sarah Jane and Ellen Maria floating among the lily- 
pads. 

The Apollinean Institute, or Institoot, as it was more 
commonly called, was, in the language of its Prospectus* 


THE MOTH FLIES INTO THE CANDLE. 


35 


sa “ first-class Educational Establishment.” It employed a 
•considerable corps of instructors to rough out and finish the 
Eundred young lady scholars it sheltered beneath its roof. 
Eirst, Mr. and Mrs. Peckham, the principal and matron of 
the school. Silas Peckham was a thorough Yankee, born 
on a windy part of the coast, and reared chiefly on salt-fish. 
Everybody knows the type of Yankee produced by this cli- 
mate and diet: thin, as if he had been split and dried; 
with an ashen kind of complexion, like the tint of the food 
he is made of 4 and about as sharp, tough, juiceless, and 
biting to deal with as the other is to the taste. Silas Peck- 
Eam kept a young ladies’ school exactly as he would have 
Eept a hundred head of cattle, — for the simple, unadorned 
purpose of making just as much money in just as few years 
as could be safely done. Mr. Peckham gave very little per- 
sonal attention to the department of instruction, but was 
always busy with contracts for flour and potatoes, beef and 
pork, and other nutritive staples, the amount of which re- 
quired for such an establishment was enough to frighten 
a quartermaster. Mrs. Peckham was from the West, raised 
•on Indian corn and pork, which give a fuller outline and 
a more humid temperament, but may perhaps be thought 
“to render people a little coarse-fibered. Her specialty was to 
look after the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising, and 
general behavior of these hundred chicks. An honest, igno- 
rant woman, she could not have passed an examination in 
the youngest class. So this distinguished institution was 
under the charge of a commissary and a housekeeper, and 
its real business was making money by taking young girls 
in as boarders. 

Connected with this, however, was the incidental fact, 
which the public took for the principal one, namely, the 
business of instruction. Mr. Peckham knew well enough 
that it was just as well to have good instructors as bad ones, 
so far as cost was concerned, and a great deal better for 
the reputation of his feeding-establishment. He tried to 
get the best he could without paying too much, and, having 
got them, to screw all the work out of them that could pos- 
sibly be extracted. 

There was a master for the English branches, with a young 
lady assistant. There was another young lady who taught 
Trench, of the ahvahng and pahndahng style, which does not 


36 


ELSIE VENNER. 


exactly smack of the asphalt of the Boulevards. There was 
also a German teacher of music, who sometimes helped in 
French of the ahfaung and bauntaung style, — so that, be- 
tween the two, the young ladies could hardly have been 
mistaken for Parisians, by a Committee of the French: 
Academy. The German teacher also taught a Latin class 
after his fashion, — henna, a ben, gahboot, a head, and so 
forth. 

The master for the English branches had lately left the 
school for private reasons, which need not be here men- 
tioned, — but he had gone, at any rate, and it was his place 
which had been offered to Mr. Bernard Langdon. The offer 
came just in season, — as, for various causes, he was willing 
to leave the place where he had begun his new experience. 

It was on a fine morning, that Mr. Bernard, ushered in 
by Mr. Peckham, made his appearance in the great school- 
room of the Apollinean Institute. A general rustle ran all 
round the seats when the handsome young man was intro- 
duced. The principal carried him to the desk of the young^ 
lady English assistant, Miss Darley by name, and intro- 
duced him to her. 

There was not a great deal of study done that day. The 
young lady assistant had to point out to the new master 
the whole routine in which the classes were engaged when 
their late teacher left, and which had gone on as well as it 
could since. Then Master Langdon had a great many ques- 
tions to ask, some relating to his new duties, and some, 
perhaps, implying a degree of curiosity not very unnatural 
under the circumstances. The truth is, the general effect of 
the schoolroom, with its scores of young girls, all their eyes 
naturally centering on him with fixed or furtive glances, 
was enough to bewilder and confuse a young man like 
Master Langdon, though he was not destitute of self-pos- 
session, as we have already seen. 

You cannot get together a hundred girls, taking them as 
they come, from the comfortable and affluent classes, prob- 
ably anywhere, certainly not in New England, without see- 
ing a good deal of beauty. In fact, we very commonly mean 
by beauty the way young girls look when there is nothing 
to hinder their looking as Nature meant them to. And 
the great schoolroom of the Apollinean Institute did really^ 
make so pretty a show on the morning when Master Lang- 


THE MOTH FLIES INTO THE CANDLE. 37 

'don entered it, that he might be pardoned for asking Miss 
Darley more questions about his scholars than about their 
lessons. 

There were girls of all ages: little creatures, some pallid 
and delicate-looking, the offspring of invalid parents, — much 
.given to books, not much to mischief, commonly spoken of 
as particularly good children, and contrasted with another 
sort, girls of more vigorous organization, who were disposed 
to laughing and play, and required a strong hand to manage 
them; then young growing misses of every shade of Saxon 
complexion, and here and there one of more Southern hue: 
hlondes, some of them so translucent-looking, that it seemed 
.as if you could see the souls in their bodies, like bubbles in 
glass, if souls were objects of sight; brunettes, some with 
rose-red colors, and some with that swarthy hue which often 
carries with it a heavily shaded lip, and which, with pure 
• outlines and outspoken reliefs, gives us some of our hand- 
somest women, — the women whom ornaments of plain gold 
adorn more than any other parures; and again, but only 
here and there, one with dark hair and gray or blue eyes, a 
-Celtic type, perhaps, but found in our native stock occasion- 
ally; rarest of all, a light-haired girl with dark eyes, hazel, 
brown, or of the color of that mountain-brook spoken of 
in this chapter, where it ran through shadowy woodlands. 
With these were to be seen at intervals some of maturer 
years, full-blown flowers among the opening buds, with that 
conscious look upon their faces which so many women wear 
during the period when they never meet a single man with- 
out having his monosyllable ready for him, — tied as they 
are, poor things ! on the rock of expectation, each of them 
an Andromeda waiting for her Perseus. 

“ Who is that girl in ringlets, — the fourth in the third 
row on the right ? ” said Master Langdon. 

“ Charlotte Ann Wood,” said Miss Darley — “ writes very 
pretty poems.” 

“Oh! — And the pink one, three seats from her? Looks 
bright; anything in her?” 

“ Emma Dean, — -day-scholar, — Squire Dean’s daughter, — 
nice girl, — second medal last year.” 

The master asked these two questions in a careless kind 
of way, and did not seem to pay any too much attention 
to the answers. 


38 


ELSIE VENNER. 


“And who and what is that?” he said, — “sitting a little 
apart there, — that strange, wild-looking girl ? ” 

This time he put the real question he wanted answered; 
the other two were asked at random, as masks for the third.. 

The lady-teacher’s face changed; one would have said 
she was frightened or troubled. She looked at the girl 
doubtfully, as if she might hear the master’s question and 
its answer. But the girl did not look up; she was winding 
a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if 
in a kind of reverie. 

Miss Darley drew close to the master, and placed her hapd 
so as to hide her lips. “ Don’t look at her as if we were 
talking about her,” she whispered softly; “that is Elsie 
Vennor.” 


CHAPTER V. 


AN OLD-FASHIONED DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTER. 

It was a comfort to get to a place with something like 
society, with residences which had pretensions to elegance,, 
with people of some breeding, with a newspaper, and. 
“ stores ” to advertise in it, and with two or three churches, 
to keep each other alive by wholesome agitation. Rockland 
was such a place. 

Some of the natural features of the town have been de- 
scribed already. The Mountain, of course, was what gave- 
it its character, and redeemed it from wearing the common- 
place expression which belongs to ordinary country-villages.. 
Beautiful, wild, invested with the mystery which belongs- 
to untrodden spaces, and with enough of terror to give it 
dignity, it had yet closer relations with the town over which 
it brooded than the passing stranger knew of. Thus, it made 
a local climate by cutting off the northern winds and holding - 
the sun’s heat like a garden-wall. Peach-trees, which on 
the northern side of the mountain, hardly ever came to fruit,, 
ripened abundant crops in Rockland. 

But there was still another relation between the mountain 
and the town at its foot, which strangers were not likely to 
hear alluded to, and which was oftener thought of than 
spoken of by its inhabitants. Those high-impending forests, 
— “ hangers,” as White of Selbome would have called them, 
— sloping far upward and backward into the distance, had 
always an air of menace blended with their wild beauty. It 
seemed as if some heaven-scaling Titan had thrown his 
shaggy robe over the bare, precipitous flanks of the rocky 
summit, and it might at any moment slide like a garment 
flung carelessly on the nearest chance-support, and, so slid- 
ing, crush the village out of being, as the Rossberg when it 
tumbled over on the valley of Goldau. 

Persons have been known to remove from the place, after- 
a short residence in it, because they were haunted day and 
night by the thought of this awful green wall piled up into 

39 


40 


ELSIE VENNER. 


the air over their heads. They would lie awake of nights, 
.thinking they heard the muffled snapping of the roots, as 
if a thousand acres of the mountain-side were tugging to 
.break away, like the snow from a house-roof, and a hundred 
thousand trees were clinging with all their fibers to hold 
back the soil just ready to peel away and crash down with 
all its rocks and forest-growths. And yet, by one of those 
strange contradictions we are constantly finding in human 
nature, there were natives of the town who would come back 
.thirty or forty years after leaving it, just to nestle under 
.this same threatening mountain-side, as old men sun them- 
selves against southward-facing walls. The old dreams and 
legends of danger added to the attraction. If the mountain 
-should ever slide, they had a kind of feeling as if they ought 
to be there. It was a fascination like that which the rattle- 
snake is said to exert. 

This comparison naturally suggests the recollection of 
that other source of danger which was an element in the 
every-day life of the Rockland people. The folks in some 
-of the neighboring towns had a joke against them, that 
a Rocklander couldn’t hear a bean-pod rattle without saying, 
“ The Lord have mercy on us ! ” It is very true, that many 
a nervous old lady has had a terrible start, caused by some 
mischievous young rogue’s giving a sudden shake to one of 
these noisy vegetable products in her immediate vicinity. 
Yet, strangely enough, many persons missed the excitement 
of the possibility of a fatal bite in other regions, where there 
were nothing but black and green and striped snakes, mean 
ophidians, having the spite of the nobler serpent without 
his venom, — poor crawling creatures, whom Nature would 
not trust with a poison-bag. Many natives of Rockland did 
unquestionably experience a certain gratification in this in- 
finitesimal sense of danger. It was noted that the old peo- 
ple retained their hearing longer than in other places. 
Some said it was the softened climate, but others believed 
it was owing to the habit of keeping their ears open when- 
ever they were walking through the grass or in the woods. 
At any rate, a slight sense of danger is often an agreeable 
stimulus. People sip their creme de noyau with a peculiar 
tremulous pleasure, because there is a bare possibility that 
it may contain prussic acid enough to knock them over; in 
which case they will lie as dead as if a thunder-cloud had 


AN OLD-FASHIONED DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTER. 41 

emptied itself into the earth through their brain and' mar- 
row. 

But Rockland had other features which helped to give it. 
a special character. First of all, there was one grand street, 
which was its chief glory. Elm Street it was called, nat- 
urally enough, for its elms made a long, pointed-arched, 
gallery of it through most of its extent. No natural Gothic: 
arch compares, for a moment, with that formed by two* 
American elms, where their lofty jets of foliage shoot across 
each other’s ascending curves, to intermingle their showery 
flakes of green. When one looks through a long double row 
of these, as in that lovely avenue which the poets of Yale, 
remember so well, — 

“ O, could the vista of my life but now as bright appear 

As when I first through Temple Street looked down thine espalier!” 

he beholds a temple not built with hands, fairer than any 
minster, with all its clustered stems and flowering capitals,, 
that ever grew in stone. 

Nobody knows New England who is not on terms of in- 
timacy with one of its elms. The elm comes nearer to hav- 
ing a soul than any other vegetable creature among us. It 
loves man as man loves it. It is modest and patient. It has; 
a small flake of a seed which blows in everywhere and makes: 
arrangements for coming up by-and-by. So, in spring, one- 
finds a crop of baby-elms among his carrots and parsnips,, 
very weak and small compared to those succulent vegetables.. 
The baby-elms die, most of them, slain, unrecognized or un- 
heeded, by hand or hoe, as meekly as Herod’s innocents. One 
of them gets overlooked, perhaps, until it has established a 
kind of right to stay. Three generations of carrot and 
parsnip-consumers have passed away, yourself among them,, 
and now let your great-grandson look for the baby-elm.. 
Twenty- two feet of clean girth, three hundred and sixty 
feet in the line that bounds its leafy circle, it covers the boy 
with such a canopy as neither glossy-leafed oak nor insect- 
haunted linden ever lifted into the summer skies. 

Elm Street was the pride of Rockland, but not only on- 
account of its Gothic-arched vista. In this street were most 
of the great houses, or “ mansion-houses,” as it was usual to- 
call them. Along this street, also, the more nicely kept and 
neatly painted dwellings were chiefly congregated. It was; 


42 


ELSIE VENDER. 


the correct thing for a Eockland dignitary to have a houso 
in Elm Street. 

A New England “mansion-house ” is naturally square, 
with dormer windows projecting from the roof, which has a 
.balustrade with turned posts round it. It shows a great 
breadth of front-yard before its door, as its owner shows a 
^respectable expanse of clean shirt-front. It has a lateral 
margin beyond its stables and offices, as its master wears his 
white wrist-bands showing beyond his coat-cuffs. It may 
not have what can properly be called grounds, but it must 
have elbow-room, at any rate. Without it, it is like a man 
who is always tight-buttoned for want of any linen to show. 
The mansion-house which has had to button itself up tight 
in fences, for want of green or gravel margin, will be adver- 
tising for boarders presently. The old English pattern of 
the New England mansion-house, only on a somewhat 
grander scale, is Sir Thomas Abney’s place, where dear, good 
Dr. Watts said prayers for the family, and wrote those 
blessed hymns of his that sing us into consciousness in our 
•cradles, and come back to us in sweet, single verses, between 
the moments of wandering and of stupor, when we lie dying, 
and sound over us when we can no longer hear them, bring- 
ing grateful tears to the hot, aching eyes beneath the thick, 
black veils, and carrying the holy calm with them, which 
filled the good man’s heart, as he prayed and sung under the 
shelter of the old English mansion-house. 

Next to the mansion-houses, came the two-story, trim, 
white-painted, “ genteel ” houses, which, being more gossipy 
and less nicely bred, crowded close up to the street, instead 
-of standing back from it with arms akimbo, like the man- 
sion-houses. Their little front-yards were very commonly 
full of lilac and syringa and other bushes, which were allowed 
to smother the lower story almost to the exclusion of light and 
air, so that, what with small windows and small window- 
panes, and the darkness made by these choking growths of 
shrubbery, the front parlors of some of these houses were the 
most tomb-like, melancholy places that could be found any- 
where among the abodes of the living. Their garnishing 
~was apt to assist this impression. Large-patterned carpets, 
which always look discontented in little rooms, hair-cloth 
furniture, black and shiny as beetles’ wing cases, and center- 
tables, with a sullen oil-lamp of the kind called astral by our 


AN OLD-FASHIONED DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTER. 4S 

imaginative ancestors, in the center, — these things were in- 
evitable. In set piles round the lamp was ranged the current 
literature of the day, in the form of Temperance Documents* 
unbound numbers of the Unknown Public’s Magazines with, 
worn-out steel engravings and high-colored fashion-plates* 
the Poems of a distinguished British author whom it is un- 
necessary to mention, a volume of sermons, or a novel or 
two, or both, according to the tastes of the family, and the 
Good Book, which is always Itself in the cheapest and com- 
monest company. The father of the family with his hand in 
the breast of his coat, the mother of the same in a wide- 
bordered cap, sometimes a print of the Last Supper, by no 
means Morghen’s, or the Father of his Country, or the old. 
General, or the Defender of the Constitution, or an un- 
known clergyman with an open book before him, — these were 
the usual ornaments of the walls, the first two a matter of 
rigor, the others according to politics and other tendencies^ 

This intermediate class of houses, wherever one finds them 
in New England towns, are very apt to be cheerless and un- 
satisfactory. They have neither the luxury of the mansion- 
house nor the comfort of the farm-house. They are rarely- 
kept at an agreeable temperature. The mansion-house has', 
large fire-places and generous chimneys, and is open to the 
sunshine. The farm-house makes no pretensions, but it has. 
a good warm kitchen, at any rate, and one can be comfortable 
there with the rest of the family, without fear and without 
reproach. These lesser country-houses of genteel aspirations', 
are much given to patent subterfuges of one kind and an- 
other to get heat without combustion. The chilly parlor 
and the slippery hair-cloth seat take the life out of the warm- 
est welcome. If one would make these places wholesome, 
happy, and cheerful, the first precept would be, — The dearest 
fuel, plenty of it, and let half the heat go up the chimney. 
If you can’t afford this, don’t try to live in a “genteel” 1 
fashion, but stick to the ways of the honest farm-house. 

There were a good many comfortable farm-houses scattered" 
about Rockland. The best of them were something of the 
following pattern, which is too often superseded of late by a 
more pretentious, but infinitely less pleasing kind of rustic 
architecture. A little back from the road, seated directly 
on the green sod, rose a plain wooden building, two stories in 
front, with a long roof sloping backwards to within a few> 


44 


ELSIE VENNER. 


feet of the ground. This, like the “ mansion-house, 1 ” is 
copied from an old English pattern. Cottages of this model 
may be seen in Lancashire, for instance, always with the same 
honest, homely look, as if their roofs acknowledged their re- 
lationship to the soil out of which they had sprung. The 
walls were unpainted, but turned by the slow action of the 
sun and air and rain to a quiet dove- or slate-color. An old 
broken mill-stone at the door, — a well-sweep pointing like a 
finger to the heavens, which the shining round of water 
beneath looked up at like a dark unsleeping eye, — a single 
large elm a little at one side, — a barn twice as big as the 
house, — a cattle-yard, with 

“The white horns tossing above the wall,” — 

some fields, in pasture or in crops, with low stone walls 
round them, — a row of beehives, — a garden-patch, with roots, 
nnd currant-bushes, and many-hued hollyhocks, and swollen- 
stemmed, globe-headed, seedling onions, and marigolds, and 
flower-de-luces, and lady’s-delights, and peonies, crowding in 
together, with southernwood in the borders, and woodbine 
and hops and morning-glories climbing as they got a chance, 
— these were the features by which the Rockland-born chil- 
dren remembered the farm-house, when they had grown to be 
men. Such are the recollections that come over poor sailor- 
boys crawling out on the reeling yards to reef topsails as 
their vessels stagger round the stormy Cape; and such are 
the flitting images that make the eyes of old country-born 
merchants look dim and dreamy, as they sit in their city 
palaces, warm with the after-dinner flush of the red wave 
out of which Memory arises, as Aphrodite arose from the 
green waves of the ocean. 

Two meeting-houses stood on two eminences, facing each 
other, and looking like a couple of fighting-cocks with their 
necks straight up in the air, — as if they would flap their 
roofs, the next thing, and crow out of their upstretched 
steeples, and peck at each other’s glass eyes with their sharp- 
pointed weathercocks. 

The first was a good pattern of the real old-fashioned New 
England meeting-house. It was a large barn with windows, 
fronted by a square tower crowned with a kind of wooden 
bell inverted and raised on legs, out of which rose a slender 
aspire with the sharp-billed weathercock at the summit. In- 


AN OLD-FASHIONED DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTER. 45 * 

side, tall, square pews with flapping seats, and a gallery run- 
ning round three sides of the building. On the fourth side* 
the pulpit, with a huge, dusty sounding-board hanging over 
it. Here preached the Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood,. 
D. D., successor, after a number of generations, to the office 
and the parsonage of the Reverend Didymus Bean, before* 
mentioned, but not suspected of any of his alleged heresies.. 
He held to the old faith of the Puritans, and occasionally- 
delivered a discourse which was considered by the hard- 
headed theologians of his parish to have settled the whole- 
matter fully and finally, so that now there was a good logical 
basis laid down for the Millennium, which might begin at 
once upon the platform of his demonstrations. Yet the* 
Reverend Dr. Honeywood was fonder of preaching plain,, 
practical sermons about the duties of life, and showing his; 
Christianity in abundant good works among his people. It 
was noticed by some few of his flock, not without comment,, 
that the great majority of his texts came from the Gospels,, 
and this more and more as he became interested in various 
benevolent enterprises which brought him into relations with 
ministers and kind-hearted laymen of other denominations.. 
He was in fact a man of a very warm, open, and exceedingly 
human disposition, and although bred by a clerical father,, 
w r hose motto was “ Sit anima mea cum Puritanis,” he exer- 
cised his human faculties in the harness of his ancient 
faith with such freedom that the straps of it got so loose they- 
did not interfere greatly with the circulation of the warm 
blood through his system. Once in a while he seemed to> 
think it necessary to come out with a grand doctrinal ser- 
mon, and then he would lapse away for a while into preach- 
ing on men’s duties to each other and to society, and hit 
hard, perhaps, at some of the actual vices of the time and 
place, and insist with such tenderness and eloquence on the* 
great depth and breadth of true Christian love and charity, 
that his oldest deacon shook his head, and wished he had 
shown as much interest when he was preaching, three Sab- 
baths back, on Predestination, or in his discourse against 
the Sabellians. But he was sound in the faith; no doubt of 
that. Did he not preside at the council held in the town of 
Tamarack, on the other side of the mountain, which expelled 
its clergyman for maintaining heretical doctrines? As pre- 
siding officer, he did not vote, of course, but there was no? 


46 


ELSIE VENNER. 


doubt that he was all right; he had some of the Edwards 
blood in him, and that couldn’t very well let him go 
wrong. 

The meeting-house on the other and opposite summit was 
' of a more modern style, considered by many a great improve- 
ment on the old New England model, so that it is not un- 
common for a country parish to pull down its old meeting- 
house which has been preached in for a hundred years or so, 
and put up one of these more elegant edifices. The new 
building was in what may be called the florid shingle-Gothic 
manner. Its pinnacles and crockets and other adornments 
were, like the body of the building, all of pine wood, — an 
admirable material, as it is very soft and easily worked, 
and can be painted of any color desired. Inside, the walls 
~were stuccoed in imitation of stone, — first a dark-brown 
square, then two light-brown squares, then another dark- 
brown square, and so on, to represent the accidental differ- 
ences of shade always noticeable in the real stones of which 
walls are built. To be sure, the architect could not help 
getting his party-colored squares in almost as regular rhyth- 
mical order as those of a chess-board; but nobody can avoid 
doing things in a systematic and serial way; indeed, people 
who wish to plant trees in natural clumps know very well 
that they cannot keep from making regular lines and sym- 
metrical figures, unless by some trick or other, as that one of 
throwing a peck of potatoes up into the air and sticking in a 
tree wherever a potato happens to fall. The pews of this 
meeting-house were the usual oblong ones, where people sit 
close together with a ledge before them to support their 
hymn-books, liable only to occasional contact with the back 
of the next pew’s heads or bonnets, and a place running 
under the seat of that pew where hats could be deposited, — 
always at the risk of the owner, in case of injury by boots or 
crickets. 

In this meeting-house preached the Reverend Chauncey 
Eairweather, a divine of the “Liberal” school, as it is com- 
monly called, bred at that famous college which used to be 
thought, twenty or thirty years ago, to have the monopoly 
of training young men in the milder forms of heresy. His 
ministrations were attended with decency, but not followed 
with enthusiasm. “ The beauty of virtue ” got to be an old 
.story at last. “ The moral dignity of human nature ” 


AN OLD-FASHIONED DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTER. 47 

ceased to excite a thrill of satisfaction, after some hundred 
repetitions. It grew to be a dull business, this preaching 
against stealing and intemperance, while he knew very well 
that the thieves were prowling round orchards and empty 
houses, instead of being there to hear the sermon, and that 
the drunkards, being rarely church-goers, get little good by the 
statistics and eloquent appeals of the preacher. Every now 
and then, however, the Reverend Mr. Fairweather let off a 
polemic discourse against his neighbor opposite, which waked 
his people up a little; but it was a languid congregation, at 
best, — very apt to stay away from meeting in the afternoon, 
and not at all given to extra evening services. The minister, 
unlike his rival of the other side of the way, was a down- 
hearted and timid kind of man. He went on preaching as he 
had been taught to preach, but he had misgivings at times. 
There was a little Roman Catholic church at the foot of the 
hill where his own was placed, which he always had to pass 
on Sundays. He could never look on the thronging multi- 
tudes that crowded its pews and aisles or knelt bare-headed 
on its steps, without a longing to get in among them and go 
down on his knees and enjoy the luxury of devotional 
contact which makes a worshiping throng as different from 
the same numbers praying apart as a bed of coals is from 
a trail of scattered cinders. 

“ Oh, if I could but huddle in with those poor laborers and 
^working-women ! ” he would say to himself. “ If I could 
but breathe that atmosphere, stifling though it be, yet made 
holy by ancient litanies, and cloudy with the smoke of hal- 
lowed incense, for one hour, instead of droning over these 
moral precepts to my half-sleeping congregation ! ” The in- 
tellectual isolation of his sect preyed upon him; for, of all 
terrible things to natures like his, the most terrible is to be- 
long to a minority. No person that looked at his thin and 
sallow cheek, his sunken and sad eye, his tremulous lip, his 
contracted forehead, or who heard his querulous, though not 
unmusical voice, could fail to see that his life was an uneasy 
one, that he was engaged in some inward conflict. His 
dark, melancholic aspect contrasted with his seemingly 
cheerful creed, and was all the more striking, as the worthy 
T)r. Honeywood, professing a belief which made him a pas- 
senger on board a shipwrecked planet, was yet a most good- 
lumored and companionable gentleman, whose laugh op. 


48 


ELSIE VENNER. 


week-days did one as much good to listen to as the best: 
sermon he ever delivered on a Sunday. 

A mile or two from the center of Rockland was a pretty 
little Episcopal church, with a roof like a wedge of cheese, a 
square tower, a stained window, and a trained rector, who- 
read service with such ventral depth of utterance and rrredu- 
plication of the rrresonant letter, that his own mother would 
not have known him for her son, if the good woman had not 
ironed his surplice and put it on with her own hands. 

There were two public-houses in the place: one dignified 
with the name of the Mountain House, somewhat frequented 
by city-people in the summer months, large-fronted, three- 
storied, balconied, boasting a distinct ladies’ drawing room,, 
and spreading a table d’hote of some pretensions; the other,. 
“Pollard’s Tahvem,” in the common speech, — a two-story 
building, with a barroom, once famous, where there was a 
great smell of hay and boots and pipes and all other bucolic- 
flavored elements, — where games of checkers were played on 
the back of the bellows with red and white kernels of corn, 
or with beans and coffee, — where a man slept in a box-settle 
at night, to wake up early passengers, — where teamsters 
came in, with wooden-handled whips and coarse frocks, re- 
enforcing the bucolic flavor of the atmosphere, and middle- 
aged male gossips, sometimes including the squire of the 
neighboring law-office, gathered to exchange a question or 
two about the news, and then fall into that solemn state of 
suspended animation which the temperance barrooms of 
modem days produce in human beings, as the Grotta del 
Cane does in dogs in the well-known experiments related by 
travelers. This barroom used to be famous for drinking and 
story-telling, and sometimes fighting, in old times. That 
was when there were rows of decanters on the shelf behind 
the bar, and a hissing vessel of hot water ready, to make 
punch, and three or four loggerheads (long irons clubbed at 
the end) were always lying in the fire in the cold season, 
waiting to be plunged into sputtering and foaming mugs of 
flip, — a goodly compound, speaking according to the flesh, 
made with beer and sugar, and a certain suspicion of strong* 
waters, over which a little nutmeg being grated, and in it the 
hot iron being then allowed to sizzle, there results a peculiar 
singed aroma, which the wise regard as a warning to remove 
themselves at once out of the reach of temptation. 


AN OLD-FASHIONED DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTER 49 


But the bar of Pollard’s Tahvem no longer presented its 
old attractions, and the loggerheads had long disappeared 
from the fire. In place of the decanters, were boxes con* 
taining “ lozengers,” as they were commonly called, sticks of 
candy in jars, cigars in tumblers, a few lemons, grown hard- 
skinned and marvelously shrunken by long exposure, but 
still feebly suggestive of possible lemonade, — the whole orna- 
mented by festoons of yellow and blue cut fly-paper. On the 
front shelf of the bar stood a large German-silver pitcher of 
water, and scattered about were ill-conditioned lamps, with 
wicks that always wanted picking, which burned red and 
smoked a good deal, and were apt to go out without any 
obvious cause, leaving strong reminiscences of the whale- 
fishery in the circumambient air. 

The common school-houses of Rockland were dwarfed by 
the grandeur of the Apollinean Institute. The master 
passed one of them, in a walk he was taking, soon after his 
arrival in Rockland. He looked in at the rows of desks, and 
recalled his late experiences. He could not help laughing, 
as he thought how neatly he had knocked the young butcher 
off his pins. 

“ 1 A little science is a dangerous thing,’ 

as well as a little 1 learning,’ ” he said to himself ; a only it’s 
dangerous to the fellow you try it on.” And he cut him a 
good stick, and began climbing the side of The Mountain to 
get a look at that famous Rattlesnake Ledge. 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE SUNBEAM AND THE SHADOW. 

The virtue of the world is not mainly in its leaders. In 
the midst of the multitude which follows there is often some- 
thing better than in the one that goes before. Old generals 
wanted to take Toulon, but one of their young colonels 
showed them how. The junior counsel has been known not 
unfrequently to make a better argument than his senior 
fellow, — if, indeed, he did not make both their arguments.. 
Good ministers will tell you they have parishioners 
who beat them in the practice of the virtues. A great 
establishment, got up on commercial principles, like the* 
Apollinean Institute, might yet be well carried on, if it hap- 
pened to get good teachers. And when Master ’Langdoir 
came to see its management, he recognized that there must 
he fidelity and intelligence somewhere among the instructors.. 
It was only necessary to look for a moment at the fair, open 
forehead, the still, tranquil eye of gentle, habitual authority,, 
the sweet gravity that lay upon the lips, to hear the clear 
answers to the pupil’s questions, to notice how every request 
had the force without the form of a command, and the young- 
man could not doubt that the good genius of the school 
stood before him in the person of Helen Darley. 

It was the old story. A poor country-clergyman dies, and 
leaves a widow and a daughter. In Old England the daugh- 
ter would have eaten the bitter bread of a governess in some 
rich family. In New England she must keep a school. So, 
rising from one sphere to another, she at length finds herself 
the prima donna in the department of instruction in Mr. 
Silas Peckham’s educational establishment. 

What a miserable thing it is to be poor ! She was depend- 
ent, frail, sensitive, conscientious. She was in the power of’ 
a hard, grasping, thin-blooded, tough-fibered, trading educa- 
tor, who neither knew nor cared for a tender woman’s sensi- 
bilities, but who paid her and meant to have his money’s 
worth out of her brains, and as much more than his money’s. 


50 


THE SUNBEAM AND THE SHADOW. 


51 


-worth as he could get. She was consequently, in plain Eng- 
lish, overworked, and an overworked woman is always a sad 
sight, sadder a great deal than an overworked man, because 
she is so much more fertile in capacities of suffering than a 
man. She has so many varieties of headache, — sometimes 
as if Jael were driving the nail that killed Sisera into her 
temples, — sometimes letting her work with half her brain 
while the other half throbs as if it would go to pieces, — 
sometimes tightening round the brows as if her cap-band 
were a ring of iron, — and then her neuralgias, and her back- 
.aches, and her fits of depression, in which she thinks she is 
nothing and less than nothing, and those paroxysms which 
men speak slightingly of as hysterical, — convulsions, that is 
all, only not commonly fatal ones, — -so many trials which 
belong to her fine and mobile structure, — that she is always 
entitled to pity, when she is placed in conditions which 
develop her nervous tendencies. 

The poor young lady’s work had, of course, been doubled 
•since the departure of Master Langdon’s predecessor. No- 
body knows what the weariness of instruction is, as soon as 
the teacher’s faculties begin to be overtasked, but those who 
bave tried it. The relays of fresh pupils, each new set with 
its exhausting powers in full action coming one after an- 
other, take out all the reserve forces and faculties of resist- 
ance from the subject of their draining process. 

The day’s work was over, and it was late in the evening, 
-when she sat down, tired and faint, with a great bundle of 
.girls’ themes or compositions to read over before she could 
rest her weary head on the pillow of her narrow trundle-bed, 
;and forget for a while the treadmill stair of labor she was 
daily climbing. 

How she dreaded this most forlorn of all a teacher’s tasks ! 
She was conscientious in her duties, and would insist on 
reading every sentence, there was no saying where she 
might find faults of grammar or bad spelling. There 
might have been twenty or thirty of these themes in the 
bundle before her. Of course she knew pretty well the 
leading sentiments they would contain : that beauty was sub- 
ject to the accidents of time; that wealth was inconstant, 
and existence uncertain; that virtue was its own reward; 
that youth exhaled, like the dewdrop from the flower, ere the 
sun had reached its meridian; that life was o’ershadowed 


$2 


ELSIE VENNER. 


with trials; that the lessons of virtue instilled by our be- 
loved teachers were to be our guides through all our future 
career. The imagery employed consisted principally of 
roses, lilies, birds, clouds, and brooks, with the celebrated 
comparison of wayward genius to a meteor. Who does not 
know the small, slanted, Italian hand of these girls’-com- 
positions, — their stringing together of the good old tradi- 
tional copy-book phrases, their occasional gushes of senti- 
ment, their profound estimates of the world, sounding to 
the old folks that read them as the experience of a bantam- 
pullet’s last-hatched young one with the chips of the shell on 
its head would sound to a Mother Cary’s chicken, who knew 
the great ocean with all its typhoons and tornadoes? Yet 
every now and then one is liable to be surprised with strange 
clairvoyant flashes, that can hardly be explained, except by 
the mysterious inspiration which every now and then seizes 
a young girl and exalts her intelligence, just as hysteria in- 
other instances exalts the sensibility, — a little something of* 
that which made Joan of Arc, and the Burney girl who pro- 
phesied “ Evelina,” and the Davidson sisters. In the midst: 
of these commonplace exercises which Miss Darley read over 
so carefully were two or three that had something of indi- 
vidual flavor about them, and here and there there was an 
image or an epithet which showed the footprint of a pas- 
sionate nature, as a fallen scarlet feather marks the path the- 
wild flamingo has trodden. 

The young lady teacher read them with a certain indiffer- 
ence of manner, as one reads proofs, — noting defects of de- 
tail, but not commonly arrested by the matters treated of- 
Even Miss Charlotte Ann Wood’s poem, beginning 

“ How sweet at evening’s balmy hour,” 

did not excite her. She marked the inevitable false rhyme- 
of Cockney and Yankee beginners, mom and dawn, and 
tossed the verses on the pile of papers she had finished. She 
was looking over some of the last of them in a rather listless 
way, — for the poor thing was getting sleepy in spite of 
herself, — when she came to one which seemed to rouse her 
attention, and lifted her drooping lids. She looked at it a 
moment before she would touch it. Then she took hold of it 
by one corner and slid it off from the rest. One would have: 
said she was afraid of it, or had some undefined antipathy^ 


53 


THE SUNBEAM AND THE SHADOW. 

"which made it hateful to her. Such odd fancies are com- 
mon enough in young persons in her nervous state. Many 
of these young people will jump up twenty times a day and 
run to dabble the tips of their fingers in water, after touch- 
ing the most inoffensive objects. 

This composition was written in a singular, sharp-pointed, 
long, slender hand, on a kind of wavy, ribbed paper. There 
was something strangely suggestive about the look of it, — 
but exactly of what. Miss Darley either could not or did not 
try to think. The subject of the paper was The Mountain, 
— the composition being a sort of descriptive rhapsody. It 
showed a startling familiarity with some of the savage 
scenery of the region. One would have said that the writer 
must have threaded its wildest solitudes by the light of the 
moon and stars as well as by day. As the teacher read on, 
her color changed, and a kind of tremulous agitation came 
over her. There were hints in this strange paper she did not 
know what to make of. There was something in its descrip- 
tions and imagery that recalled, — Miss Darley could not say 
what, — but it made her frightfully nervous. Still she could 
mot help reading, till she came to one passage which so agi- 
tated her, that the tired and overwearied girl’s self-control 
left her entirely. She sobbed once or twice, then laughed 
convulsively, and flung herself on the bed, where she worked 
out a set hysteric spasm as she best might, without any- 
body to rub her hands and see that she did not hurt herself. 
Dy-and-by she got quiet, rose and went to her book-case, took 
■down a volume of Coleridge, and read a short time, and so 
to bed, to sleep and wake from time to time with a sudden 
.start out of uneasy dreams. 

Perhaps it is of no great consequence what it was in the 
'composition which set her off into this nervous paroxysm. 
She was in such a state that almost any slight agitation 
would have brought on the attack, and it was the accident 
of her transient excitability, very probably, which made a 
trifling cause the seeming occasion of so much disturbance. 
The theme was signed in the same peculiar, sharp, slender 
hand, E. Venner, and was, of course, written by that wild- 
looking girl who had excited the master’s curiosity and 
prompted his question, as before mentioned. 

The next morning the lady-teacher looked pale and 
wearied, naturally enough, but she was in her place at the 


54 


ELSIE VENNER„ 


usual hour, and Master Langdon in his own. Ther girls had 
not yet entered the schoolroom. 

“You have been ill, I am afraid,” said Mr. Bernard. 

“ I was not well yesterday,” she answered. “ I had a: 
worry and a kind of fright. It is so dreadful to have charge 
of all these young souls and bodies. Every young girl ought, 
to walk, locked close, arm in arm, between two guardian, 
angels. Sometimes I faint almost with the thought of all. 
that I ought to do, and of my own weakness and wants. — 
Tell me, are there not natures born so out of parallel with, 
the lines of natural law that nothing short of a miracle can 
bring them right ? ” 

Mr. Bernard had speculated somewhat, as all thoughtful 
persons of his profession are forced to do, on the innate 
organic tendencies with which individuals, families, and 
races are born. He replied, therefore, with a smile, as one 
to whom the question suggested a very familiar class of 
facts. 

“ Why, of course. Each of us is only the footing-up of a 
double column of figures that goes back to the first pair. 
Every unit tells, — and some of them are plus and some 
minus. If the columns don’t add up right, it is commonly 
because we can’t make out all the figures. I don’t mean to* 
say that something may not be added by Nature to make up 
far losses and keep the race to its average, but we are 
mainly nothing but the answer to a long sum in addition and 
subtraction. No doubt there are people born with impulses . 
at every possible angle to the parallels of Nature, as you call 
them. If they happen to cut these at right angles, of course 
they are beyond the reach of common influences. Slight 
obliquities are what we have most to do with in education. 
Penitentiaries and insane asylums take care of most of the 
right-angle cases. — I am afraid I have put it too much like 
a professor, and I am only a student, you know. Pray, what 
set you to ask me this ? Any strange cases among the 
scholars ? ” 

The meek teacher’s blue eyes met the luminous glance 
that same with the question. She, too, was of gentle blood, 
— not meaning by that that she was of any noted lineage, but 
that she came of a cultivated stock, never rich, but long' 
trained to intellectual callings. A thousand decencies,., 
amenities, reticences, graces, which no one thinks of untiE 


THE SUNBEAM AND THE SHADOW. 


55 


he misses them, are the traditional right of those who spring 
from such families. And when two persons of this excep- 
tional breeding meet in the midst of the common multitude,, 
they seek each other’s company at once by the natural law 
of elective affinity. It is wonderful how men and women 
know their peers. If two stranger queens, sole survivors 
of two shipwrecked vessels, were cast, half -naked, on a rock 
together, each would at once address the other as “ Our 
Royal Sister.” 

Helen Darley looked into the dark eyes of Bernard Lang- 
don, glittering with the light which flashed from them with 
his question. Not as those foolish, innocent country-girls 
of the small village did she look into them, to be fascinated 
and bewildered, but to sound them with a calm, steadfast 
purpose. “ A gentleman,” she said to herself, as she read 
his expression and his features with a woman’s rapid, but 
exhausting glance. 

“ A lady,” he said to himself, as he met her ques- 
tioning look, — so brief, so quiet, yet so assured, as of 
one whom necessity has taught to read faces quickly 
without offense, as children read the faces of parents, as 
wives read the faces of hard-souled husbands. All this was 
but a few seconds’ work, and yet the main point was settled. 
If there had been any vulgar curiosity or coarseness of any 
kind lurking in his expression, she would have detected it. 
If she had not lifted her eyes to his face so softly and kept 
them there so calmly and withdrawn them so quietly, he 
would not have said to himself, “ She is a lady,” for that 
word meant a good deal to the descendant of the courtly 
Wentworths and the scholarly Langdons. 

“ There are strange people everywhere, Mr. Langdon,” she 
said, “ and I don’t think our schoolroom is an exception. 
I am glad you believe in the force of transmitted tendencies. 
It would break my heart, if I did not think that there are 
faults beyond the reach of everything but God’s special 
grace. I should die, if I thought that my negligence or 
incapacity was alone responsible for the errors and sins of 
those I have charge of. Yet there are mysteries I do not 
know how to account for.” She looked all round the school- 
room, and then said, in a whisper, “ Mr. Langdon, we had a 
girl that stole, in the school, not long ago. Worse than that, 
we had a girl who tried to set us on fire. Children of good 


56 


ELSIE VENNER. 


people, both of them. And we have a girl now that frightens 
me so ” 

The door opened, and three misses came in to take their 
seats: three types, as it happened, of certain classes, into 
which it would not have been difficult to distribute the 
greater number of the girls in the school. — Hannah Martin. 
Fourteen years and three months old. Short-necked, 
thick-waisted, round-cheeked, smooth, vacant forehead, large, 
dull eyes. Looks good-natured, with little other expression. 
Three buns in her bag, and a large apple. Has a habit of 
attacking her provisions in school-hours. — Rosa Milburn. 
Sixteen. Brunette, with a rare-ripe flush in her cheeks. 
Color comes and goes easily. Eyes wandering, apt to be 
downcast. Moody at times. Said to be passionate, if irri- 
tated. Finished in high relief. Carries shoulders well back, 
and walks well, as if proud of her woman’s life, with a slight 
rocking movement, being one of the wide-flanged pattern, 
but seems restless, — a hard girl to look after. Has a romance 
in her pocket, which she means to read in school-time. — 
Charlotte Ann Wood. Fifteen. The poetess before men- 
tioned. Long, light ringlets, pallid complexion, blue eyes. 
Delicate child, half unfolded. Gentle, but languid and de- 
spondent. Does not go much with the other girls, but reads 
a good deal, especially poetry, underscoring favorite pas- 
sages. Writes a great many verses, very fast, not very cor- 
rectly; full of the usual human sentiments, expressed in 
the accustomed phrases. Undervitalized. Sensibilities not 
covered with their normal integuments. A negative condi- 
tion, often confounded with genius, and sometimes running 
into it. Young people who fall out of line through weak- 
ness of the active faculties are often confounded with those 
who step out of it through strength of the intellectual ones. 

The girls kept coming in, one after another, or in pairs 
or groups, until the schoolroom was nearly full. Then there 
was a little pause, and a light step was heard in the pas- 
sage. The lady-teacher’s eyes turned to the door, and the 
master’s followed them in the same direction. 

A girl of about seventeen entered. She was tall and 
slender, but rounded, with a peculiar undulation of move- 
ment, such as one sometimes sees in perfectly untutored 
country-girls, whom Nature, the queen of graces, has taken 
in hand, but more commonly in connection with the very 


THE SUNBEAM AND THE SHADOW. 57 

highest breeding of the most thoroughly trained society. 
She was a splendid scowling beauty, black-browed, with a 
flash of white teeth which was always like a surprise when 
her lips parted. She wore a checkered dress, of a curious pat- 
tern, and a camel’s-hair scarf twisted a little fantastically 
about her. She went to her seat, which she had moved a 
short distance apart from the rest, and, sitting down, began 
playing listlessly with her gold chain, as was a common 
habit with her, coiling it and uncoiling it about her slender 
wrist, and braiding it in with her long, delicate fingers. 
Presently she looked up. Black, piercing eyes, not large, — 
a low forehead, as low as that of Clytie in the Townley bust, 
— black hair, twisted in heavy braids, — a face that one could 
not help looking at for its beauty, yet that one wanted to 
look away from for something in its expression, and could 
not for those diamond eyes. They were fixed on the lady- 
teacher now. The latter turned her own away, and let 
them wander over the other scholars. But they could not 
help coming back again for a single glance at the wild 
beauty. The diamond eyes were on her still. She turned 
the leaves of several of her books, as if in search of some 
passage, and, when she thought she had waited long enough 
to be safe, once more stole a quick look at the dark girl. 
The diamond eyes were still upon her. She put her kerchief 
to her forehead, which had grown slightly moist; she sighed 
once, almost shivered, for she felt cold; then, following 
some ill-defined impulse, which she could not resist, she left 
her place and went to the young girl’s desk. 

“What do you want of me, Elsie Venner?” It was a 
strange question to put, for the girl had not signified that 
she wished the teacher to come to her. 

“ Nothing,” she said. “ I thought I could make you 
come.” The girl spoke in a low tone, a kind of half -whisper. 
She did not lisp, yet her articulation of one or two conso- 
nants was not absolutely perfect. 

“ Where did you get that flower, Elsie ? ” said Miss Darley. 
It was a rare alpine flower, w T hich was found only in one 
spot among the rocks of The Mountain. 

“Where it grew,” said Elsie Venner. “Take it.” The 
teacher could not refuse her. The girl’s finger-tips touched 
hers as she took it. How cold they were for a girl of such 
an organization! 


58 


ELSIE VENNER. 


The teacher went back to her seat. She made an excuse 
for quitting the schoolroom soon afterwards. The first thing 
she did was to fling the flower into her fireplace and rake 
the ashes over it. The second was to wash the tips of her 
fingers, as if she had been another Lady Macbeth. A poor, 
overtasked, nervous creature, — we must not think too much 
of her fancies. 

After school was done, she finished the talk with the mas- 
ter which had been so suddenly interrupted. There were 
things spoken of which may prove interesting by-and-by, but 
there are other matters we must first attend to. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 

“ Mr. and Mrs. Colonel Sprowle’s compliments to Mr. 
Langdon, and requests the pleasure of his company at a 
social entertainment on Wednesday evening next. 

“ Elm St. Monday.” 

On paper of a pinkish color and musky smell, with a large 
S at the top, and an embossed border. Envelope adherent, 
not sealed. Addressed, 

Langdon, Esq. 

Present. 

Brought by H. Frederic Sprowle, youngest son of the 
Colonel, — the H., of course, standing for the paternal Heze- 
kiah, put in to please the father, and reduced to its initial 
to please the mother, she having a marked preference for 
Frederic. Boy directed to wait for an answer. 

“ Mr. Langdon has the pleasure of accepting Mr. and Mrs. 
Colonel Sprowle’s polite invitation for Wednesday evening.” 

On plain paper, sealed with an initial. 

In walking along the main street, Mr. Bernard had no- 
ticed a large house of some pretensions to architectural dis- 
play, namely, unnecessarily projecting eaves, giving it a 
mushroomy aspect, wooden moldings at various available 
points, and a grandiose arched portico. It looked a little 
swaggering by the side of one or two of the mansion-houses 
that were not far from it, was painted too bright for Mr. 
Bernard’s taste, had rather too fanciful a fence before it, 
and had , some fruit-trees planted in the front-yard, which 
to this fastidious young gentleman implied a defective sense 
of the fitness of things, not promising in people who lived 
in so large a house, with a mushroom roof and a triumphal 
arch for its entrance. 

This place was known as “ Colonel Sprowle’s villa,” 


60 


ELSIE VEKNER. 


(genteel friends,) — as “ the elegant residence of our dis- 
tinguished fellow-citizen, Colonel Sprowle,” (Rockland 
Weekly Universe,) — as “ the neew haouse,” (old settlers,) — * 
as “ Spraowle’s Folly,” (disaffected and possibly envious 
neighbors,) — and in common discourse, as “the Coloners.” 

Hezekiah Sprowle, Esquire, Colonel Sprowle of the Com- 
monwealth’s Militia, was a retired “ merchant.” An India 
merchant he might, perhaps, have been properly called; for 
he used to deal in West India goods, such as coffee, sugar, 
and molasses, not to speak of rum, — also in tea, salt fish, 
butter and cheese, oil and candles, dried fruit, agricultural 
“ p’doose ” generally, industrial products, such as boots and 
shoes, and various kinds of iron and wooden ware, and at 
one end of the establishment in calicoes and other stuffs, — 
to say nothing of miscellaneous objects of the most varied 
nature, from sticks of candy, which tempted in the smaller 
youth with coppers in their fists, up to ornamental articles 
of apparel, pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged Bibles, sta- 
tionery, — in short, everything which was like to prove se- 
ductive to the rural population. The Colonel had made 
money in trade, and also by matrimony. He had married 
Sarah, daughter and heiress of the late Tekel Jordan, Esq., 
an old miser, who gave the town-clock, which carries his 
name to posterity in large gilt letters as a generous bene- 
factor of his native place. In due time the Colonel reaped 
the reward of well-placed affections. When his wife’s in- 
heritance fell in, he thought he had money enough to give 
up trade, and therefore sold out his “ store,” called in some 
dialects of the English language shop, and his business. 

Life became pretty hard work to him, of course, as soon 
as he had nothing particular to do. Country people with 
money enough not to have to work are in much more danger 
than city people in the same condition. They get a specific 
look and character, which are the same in all the villages 
where one studies them. They very commonly fall into a 
routine, the basis of which is going to some lounging-place 
or other, a barroom, a reading-room, or something of the 
kind. They grow slovenly in dress, and wear the same hat 
forever. They have a feeble curiosity for news perhaps, which 
they take daily as a man takes his bitters, and then fall 
silent and think they are thinking. But the mind goes out 
under this regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 


61 


not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation 
drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse 
whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and 
puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow- 
eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as 
yet by his wife, and though it had happened to him once 
or twice to come home rather late at night with a curious 
tendency to say the same thing twice and even three times 
over, it had always been in very cold weather, — and every- 
body knows that no one is safe to drink a couple of glasses 
of wine in a warm room and go suddenly out into the cold 
air. 

Miss Matilda Sprowle, sole daughter of the house, had 
reached the age at which young ladies are supposed in tech- 
nical language to have come out, and thereafter are consid- 
ered to be in company. 

“ There’s one piece o’ goods,” said the Colonel to his wife, 
“ that we hain’t disposed of, nor got a customer for yet. 
That’s Matildy. I don’t mean to set her up at vaandoo. I 
guess she can have her pick of a dozen.” 

“ She’s never seen anybody yet,” said Mrs. Sprowle, who 
had had a certain project for some time, but had kept quiet 
about it. “ Let’s have a party, and give her a chance to 
show herself and see some of the young folks.” 

The Colonel was not very clear-headed, and he thought, 
naturally enough, that the party was his own suggestion, 
because his remark led to the first starting of the idea. He 
entered into the plan, therefore, with a feeling of pride as 
well as pleasure, and the great project was resolved upon in 
a family council without a dissentient voice. This was the 
party, then, to which Mr. Bernard was going. The town 
had been full of it for a week. “ Everybody was asked.” So 
everybody said that was invited. But how in respect of 
those who were not asked? If it had been one of the old 
mansion-houses that was giving a party, the boundary be- 
tween the favored and the slighted families would have been 
known pretty well beforehand, and there would have been 
no great amount of grumbling. But the Colonel, for all 
his title, had a forest of poor relations and a brushwood 
swamp of shabby friends, for he had scrambled up to for- 
tune, and now the time was come when he must define hie 
new social position. 


62 


ELSIE VENNER. 


This is always an awkward business in town or country. 
An exclusive alliance between two powers is often the same 
thing as a declaration of war against a third. Rockland was 
soon split into a triumphant minority, invited to Mrs. 
Sprowle’s party, and a great majority, uninvited, of which 
the fraction just on the border line between recognized 
“ gentility ” and the level of the ungloved masses was in an 
active state of excitement and indignation. 

“ Who is she, I should like to know ? ” said Mrs. Saymore, 
the tailor’s wife. “ There was plenty of folks in Rockland 
as good as ever Sally Jordan was, if she had managed to 
pick up a merchant. Other folks could have married mer- 
chants, if their families wasn’t as wealthy as them old skin- 
flints that willed her their money,” etc., etc. Mrs. Saymore 
expressed the feeling of many beside herself. She had, 
however, a special right to be proud of the name she bore. 
Her husband was own cousin to the Saymores of Freestone 
Avenue (who write the name Seymour, and claim to be of 
the Duke of Somerset’s family, showing a clear descent from 
the Protector to Edward Seymour, (1630,) — then a jump 
that would break a herald’s neck to one Seth Saymore, 
(1783,) — from whom to the head of the present family the 
line is clear again). Mrs. Saymore, the tailor’s wife, was 
not invited, because her husband mended clothes. If he 
had confined himself strictly to making them, it would have 
put a different face upon the matter. 

The landlord of the Mountain House and his lady were 
invited to Mrs. Sprowle’s party. Not so the landlord of 
Pollard’s Tahvern and his lady. Whereupon the latter 
vowed that they would have a party at their house too, and 
made arrangements for a dance of twenty or thirty couples, 
to be followed by an entertainment. Tickets to this “ Social 
Ball” were soon circulated, and, being accessible to all at 
a moderate price, admission to the “ Elegant Supper ” in- 
cluded, this second festival promised to be as merry, if not 
as select, as the great party. 

Wednesday came. Such doings had never been heard of 
in Rockland as went on that day at the “ villa.” The carpet 
had been taken up in the long room, so that the young folks 
might have a dance. Miss Matilda’s piano had been moved 
in, and two fiddlers and a clarionet-player engaged to make 
music. All kinds of lamps had been put in requisition, and 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 


63 


•even colored wax-candles figured on the mantel-pieces. The 
eostumes of the family had been tried on the day before; 
the Colonel’s black suit fitted exceedingly well; his lady’s 
welvet dress displayed her contours to advantage; Miss Ma- 
tilda’s flowered silk was considered superb; the eldest son 
of the family, Mr. T. Jordan Sprowle, called affectionately 
and elegantly “ Geordie,” voted himself “ stunnin’ ” ; and 
even the small youth who had borne Mr. Bernard’s invita- 
tion was effective in a new jacket and trousers, buttony in 
front, and baggy in the reverse aspect, as is wont to be 
the case with the home-made garments of inland youngsters. 

Great preparations had been made for the refection which 
^was to be part of the entertainment. There was much clink- 
ing of borrowed spoons, which were to be carefully counted, 
and much clicking of borrowed china, which was to be ten- 
derly handled, — for nobody in the country keeps those vast 
closets full of such things which one may see in rich city- 
liouses. Mot a great deal could be done in the way of flowers, 
for there were no green-houses, and few plants were out as 
yet; hut there were paper ornaments for the candlesticks, 
and colored mats for the lamps, and all the tassels of the 
curtains and bells were taken out of those brown linen bags, 
in which, for reasons hitherto undiscovered, they are habitu- 
ally concealed in some households. In the remoter apart- 
ments every imaginable operation was going on at once, — 
roasting, boiling, baking, beating, rolling, pounding in mor- 
tars, frying, freezing ; for there was to be ice-cream to-night 
of domestic manufacture; — and in the midst of all these 
labors, Mrs. Sprowle and Miss Matilda were moving about, 
directing and helping as they best might, all day long. 
When the evening came, it might be feared they would not 
be in just the state of mind and body to entertain com- 
pany. 

One would like to give a party now and then, if one 

could be a billionnaire. — “ Antoine, I am going to have 
twenty people to dine to-day.” “ Bien, Madame.” Mot a 
word or thought more about it, but get home in season to 
dress, and come down to your own table, one of your own 
guests. — “ Giuseppe, we are to have a party a week from to- 
night, — five hundred invitations, — there is the list.” The 
day comes. “ Madam, do you remember you have your party 
to-night?” “ Why, so I have! Everything right? supper 


64 


ELSIE VENNER. 


and all ? ” “ All as it should be, madam.” “ Send up Vic- 
torine.” “ Victorine, full toilet for this evening, — pink, dia- 
monds, and emeralds. Coiffeur at seven. Allez.” — Billion- 
ism, or even millionism, must be a blessed kind of state, 
with health and clear conscience and youth and good looks, 
— but most blessed in this, that it takes off all the mean 
cares which give people the three wrinkles between the eye- 
brows, and leaves them free to have a good time and make 
others have a good time, all the way along from the charity 
that tips up unexpected loads of wood before widows’ houses, 
and leaves foundling turkeys upon poor men’s door-steps, 
and sets lean clergymen crying at the sight of ’anonymous 
fifty-dollar bills, to the taste which orders a perfect banquet 
in such sweet accord with every sense that everybody’s na- 
ture flowers out full-blown in its golden-glowing, fragrant 
atmosphere. 

A great party given by the smaller gentry of the 

interior is a kind of solemnity, so to speak. It involves so 
much labor and anxiety, — its spasmodic splendors are so 
violently contrasted with the homeliness of every-day fam- 
ily-life, — it is such a formidable matter to break in the raw 
subordinates to the manege of the cloak-room and the table, 
— there is such a terrible uncertainty in the results of un- 
familiar culinary operations, — so many feuds are involved 
in drawing that fatal line which divides the invited from 
the uninvited fraction of the local universe, — that, if the 
notes requested the pleasure of the guests’ company on 
“ this solemn occasion,” they would pretty nearly express the 
true state of things. 

The Colonel himself had been pressed into the service.. 
He had pounded something in the great mortar. He had 
agitated a quantity of sweetened and thickened milk in what 
was called a cream-freezer. At 11 o’clock, A. M., he retired 
for a space. On returning, his color was noted to be some- 
what heightened, and he showed a disposition to be jocular 
with the female help, — which tendency, displaying itself in 
livelier demonstrations than were approved at headquarters,, 
led to his being detailed to out-of-door duties, such as rak- 
ing gravel, arranging places for horses to be hitched to, and 
assisting in the construction of an arch of winter-green at 
the porch of the mansion. 

A whiff from Mr. Geordie’s cigar refreshed the toiling 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 65 

females from time to time ; for the windows had to be 
opened occasionally, while all these operations were going 
on, and the youth amused himself with inspecting the in- 
terior, encouraging the operatives now and then in the 
phrases commonly employed by genteel young men, — for he 
had perused an odd volume of “Verdant Green,” and was 
acquainted with a Sophomore from one of the fresh-water 
colleges. — “ Go it on the feed ! ” exclaimed this spirited 
young man. “ Nothin’ like a good spread. Grub enough 
and good liquor; that’s the ticket. Guv’nor’ll do the heavy 
polite, and let me alone for polishin’ off the young charm- 
ers.” And Mr. Geordie looked expressively at a handmaid 
who was rolling gingerbread, as if he were rehearsing for 
“Don Giovanni.” 

Evening came at last, and the ladies were forced to leave 
the scene of their labors to array themselves for the coming 
festivities. The tables had been set in a back room, the 
meats were ready, the pickles were displayed, the cake was 
baked, the blanc-mange had stiffened, and the ice-cream had 
frozen. 

At half past seven o’clock, the Colonel, in costume, came 
into the front parlor, and proceeded to light the lamps. 
Some were good-humored enough and took the hint of a 
lighted match at once. Others were as vicious as they could 
be, — would not light on any terms, any more than if they 
were filled with water, or lighted and smoked one side of 
the chimney, or sputtered a few sparks and sulked them- 
selves out, or kept up a faint show of burning, so that their 
ground glasses looked as feebly phosphorescent as so many 
invalid fireflies. With much coaxing and screwing and 
pricking, a tolerable illumination was at last achieved. At 
eight there was a grand rustling of silks, and Mrs. and Miss 
Sprowle descended from their respective bowers or boudoirs. 
Of course they were pretty well tired by this time, and very 
glad to sit down, — having the prospect before them of being 
obliged to stand for hours. The Colonel walked about the 
parlor, inspecting his regiment of lamps. By-and-by Mr. 
Geordie entered. 

“ Mph ! mph ! ” he sniffed, as he came in. “ You smell of 
lamp-smoke here.” 

That always galls people, — to have a newcomer accuse 
them of smoke or close air, which they have got used to and 


66 


ELSIE VENNER. 


do not perceive. The Colonel raged at the thought of his 
lamps’ smoking, and tongued a few anathemas inside of his 
shut teeth, but turned down two or three wicks that burned 
higher than the rest. 

Master H. Frederic next made his appearance, with ques- 
tionable marks upon his fingers and countenance. Had been 
tampering with something brown and sticky. His elder 
brother grew playful, and caught him by the baggy reverse, 
of his more essential garment. 

“ Hush ! ” said Mrs. Sprowle, — j “ there’s the bell ! ” 

Everybody took position at once, and began to look very 
smiling and altogether at ease. — False alarm. Only a parcel 
of spoons, — “loaned,” as the inland folks say when they 
mean lent, by a neighbor. 

“ Better late than never ! ” said the Colonel ; “ let me heft 
them spoons.” 

Mrs. Sprowle came down into her chair again, as if all 
her bones had been bewitched out of her. 

“ I’m pretty night beat out a’ready,” said she, “ before 
any of the folks has come.” 

They sat silent awhile, waiting for the first arrival. 
How nervous they got! and how their senses were sharp- 
ened! 

“ Hark ! ” said Miss Matilda, — “ what’s that rumblin’ ? 

It was a cart going over a bridge more than a mile off,, 
which at any other time they would not have heard. After 
this there was a lull, and poor Mrs. Sprowle’s head nodded 
once or twice. Presently a crackling and grinding of gravel ; 
— how much that means, when we are waiting for thosf. 
whom we long or dread to see ! Then a change in the ton* 
of the gravel-crackling. 

“ Yes, they have turned in at our gate. They’re cornin’ i 
Mother, mother ! ” 

Everybody in position, smiling and at ease. Bell rings. 
Enter the first set of visitors. The Event of the Season has, 
begun. 

“ Law ! it’s nothin’ but the Cranes’ folks ! I do believe 
Mahala’s come in that old green de-laine she wore at the 
Surprise Party ! ” 

Miss Matilda had peeped through a crack of the door and 
made this observation and the remark founded thereon. 
Continuing her attitude of attention, she overheard Mrs. 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 67 

CJrane and her two daughters conversing in the attiring- 
room, up one flight. 

“ How fine everything is in the great house ! ” said Mrs. 
Crane, — “ jest look at the picters ! ” 

“ Matildy Sprowle’s drawin’s,” said Ada Azuba, the eldest 
daughter. 

“ I should think so,” said Mahala Crane, her younger sis- 
ter* — a wide-awake girl, who hadn’t been to school for noth- 
ing, and performed a little on the lead pencil herself. “ I 
should like to know whether that’s a hay-cock or a moun- 
tain ! ” 

Miss Matilda winced; for this must refer to her favorite 
monochrome, executed by laying on heavy shadows and 
stumping them down into mellow harmony, — the style of 
drawing which is taught in six lessons, and the kind of 
specimen which is executed in something less than one hour. 
Parents and other very near relatives are sometimes grati- 
fied with these productions, and cause them to be framed and 
hung up, as in the present instance. 

“I guess we won’t go down jest yet,” said Mrs. Crane, 
“as folks don’t seem to have come.” 

So she began a systematic inspection of the dressing-room 
And its conveniences. 

“ Mahogany four-poster, — come from the Jordans’, I cal’- 
late. Marseilles quilt. Ruffles all round the piller. Chintz 
cur tings, — jest put up, — o’ purpose for the party, I’ll lay ye 
a dollar. — What a nice washbowl!” (Taps it with a white 
knuckle belonging to a red finger.) “ Stone chaney. — Here’s 
a bran’-new brush and comb, — and here’s a scent-bottle. 
Come here, girls, and fix yourselves in the glass, and scent 
.your pocket-handkerchers.” 

And Mrs. Crane bedewed her own kerchief with some of 
the eau de Cologne of native manufacture, — said on its label 
to be much superior to the German article. 

It was a relief to Mrs. and the Miss Cranes when the bell 
rang and the next guests were admitted. Deacon and Mrs. 
Soper, — Deacon Soper of the Rev. Mr. Fairweather’s church, 
and his lady. Mrs. Deacon Soper was directed, of course, 
To the ladies’ dressing-room, and her husband to the other 
apartment, where gentlemen were to leave their outside coats 
and hats. Then came Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, and then the 
three Miss Spinneys, then Silas Peckham, Head of the 


68 


ELblE VENNER. 


Apollinean Institute, and Mrs. Peckham, and more after 
them, until at last the ladies’ dressing-room got so full that 
one might have thought it was a trap none of them could 
get out of. In truth, they all felt a little awkwardly. No- 
body wanted to be first to venture down-stairs. At last Mr. 
Silas Peckham thought it was time to make a move for the 
parlor, and for this purpose presented himself at the door 
of the ladies’ dressing room. 

“ Lorindy, my dear ! ” he exclaimed to Mrs. Peckham, — 
“ I think there can be no impropriety in our joining the 
family down-stairs.” 

Mrs. Peckham laid her large, flaccid arm in the sharp 
angle made by the black sleeve which held the bony limb 
her husband offered, and the two took the stair and struck 
out for the parlor. The ice was broken, and the dressing- 
room began to empty itself into the spacious, lighted apart- 
ments below. 

Mr. Silas Peckham slid into the room with Mrs. Peckham 
alongside, like a shad convoying a jelly-fish. 

“ Good-evenin’, Mrs. Sprowle ! I hope I see you well this 
evenin’. How’s your haalth. Colonel Sprowle ? ” 

“ Very well, much obleeged to you. Hope you and your 
good lady are well. Much pleased to see you. Hope you’ll 
enjoy yourselves. We’ve laid out to have everything in 
good shape, — spared no trouble nor ex ” 

“ pense,” — said Silas Peckham. 

Mrs., Colonel Sprowle, who, you remember, was a Jordan, 
had nipped the Colonel’s statement in the middle of the word 
Mr. Peckham finished, with a look that jerked him like one 
of those sharp twitches women keep giving a horse when, 
they get a chance to drive one. 

Mr. and Mrs. Crane, Miss Ada Azuba, and Miss Mahala 
Crane made their entrance. There had been a discussion 
about the necessity and propriety of inviting this family, 
the head of which kept a small shop for hats and boots and 
shoes. The Colonel’s casting vote had carried it in the 
affirmative. — How terribly the poor old green de-laine did 
cut up in the blaze of so many lamps and candles. 

Deluded little wretch, male or female, in town or 

country, going to your first great party, how little you know 
the nature of the ceremony in which you are to bear the 
part of victim! What! are not these garlands and gauzy 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 69 

mists and many-colored streamers which adorn you, is not 
this music which welcomes you, this radiance that glows 
about you, meant solely for your enjoyment, young miss of 
seventeen or eighteen summers, now for the first time swim- 
ming into the frothy, chatoyant, sparkling, undulating sea 
of laces, and silks, and satins, and white-armed, flower- 
crowned maidens struggling in their waves, beneath the 
lusters that make the false summer of the drawing-room? 

Stop at the threshold ! This is a hall of judgment you 
are entering; the court is in session; and if you move five 
steps forward, you will be at its bar. 

There was a tribunal once in France, as you may remem- 
ber, called the Chambre Ardente, the Burning Chamber. 
It was hung all round with lamps, and hence its name. The 
burning chamber for the trial of young maidens is the 
blazing ball-room. What have they full-dressed you, or 
rather half -dressed you for, do you think? To make you 
look pretty, of course! — Why have they hung a chandelier 
above you, flickering all over with flames, so that it searches 
you like the noonday sun, and your deepest dimple cannot 
hold a shadow? To give brilliancy to the gay scene, no 
doubt! — No, my dear! Society is inspecting you, and it 
finds undisguised surfaces and strong lights a convenience 
in the process. The dance answers the purpose of the re- 
volving pedestal upon which the “ White Captive ” turns, 
to show us the soft, kneaded marble, which looks as if it had 
never been hard, in all its manifold aspects of living loveli- 
ness. No mercy for you, my love! Justice, strict justice, 
you shall certainly have, — neither more nor less. For, look 
you, there are dozens, scores, hundreds, with whom you must 
be weighed in the balance; and you have got to learn that 
the “ struggle for life ” Mr. Charles Darwin talks about 
reaches to vertebrates clad in crinoline, as well as to mol- 
lusks in shells, or articulates in jointed scales, or anything 
that fights for breathing-room, and food, and love in any 
coat of fur or feather! Happy they who can flash defiance 
from bright eyes and snowy shoulders back into the pendants 
of the insolent lusters ! 

Miss Mahala Crane did not have these reflections; 

and no young girl ever did, or ever will, thank Heaven! 
Her keen eyes sparkled under her plainly parted hair, and 
the green de-laine molded itself in those unmistakable lines 


70 


ELSIE VENNER. 


of natural symmetry in which Nature indulges a small shop* 
keeper’s daughter occasionally as well as a wholesale dealer’s, 
young ladies. She would have liked a new dress as much as 
any other girl, but she meant to go and have a good time 
at any rate. 

The guests were now arriving in the drawing-room pretty 
fast, and the Colonel’s hand began to burn a good deal with 
the sharp squeezes which many of the visitors gave it. Con- 
versation which had begun like a summer-shower, in scat- 
tering drops, was fast becoming continuous, and occasionally 
rising into gusty swells, with now and then a broad-chested 
laugh from some Captain, or Major, or other military per- 
sonage, — for it may be noted that all large and loud men in 
the unpaved districts bear military titles. 

Deacon Soper came up presently, and entered into con* 
versation with Colonel Sprowle. 

“ I hope to see our pastor present this evenin’, ” said the 
Deacon. 

“ I don’t feel quite sure,” the Colonel answered. “ His 
dyspepsy has been bad on him lately. He wrote to say, that,. 
Providence permitting it would be agreeable to him to take 
a part in the exercises of the evenin’; but I mistrusted he 
didn’t mean to come. To tell the truth. Deacon Soper, I 
rather guess he don’t like the idee of dancin’, and some of 
the other little arrangements.” 

“ Well,” said the Deacon, “ I know there’s some condemns- 
dancin’. I’ve heerd a good deal of talk about it among the 
folks round. Some have it that it never brings a blessin* 
on a house to have dancin’ in it. Judge Tileston died, you 
remember, within a month after he had his great ball, twelve 
year ago, and some thought it was in the natur’ of a judg- 
ment. I don’t believe in any of them notions. If a man 
happened to be struck dead the night after he’d been givin’ 
a ball,” (the Colonel loosened his black stock a little, and 
winked and swallowed two or three times,) “ I shouldn’t 
call it a judgment, — I should call it a coincidence. But 
I’m a little afraid our pastor won’t, come. Somethin’ or 
other’s the matter with Mr. Fairweather. I should sooner 
expect to see the old doctor come over out of the Orthodox 
parsonage-house.” 

“ I’ve asked him,” said the Colonel. 

“Well?” said Deacon Soper. 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 72 

“ He said he should like to come, but he didn’t know what, 
his people would say. For his part, he loved to see young: 
folks havin’ their sports together, and very often felt as if 
he should like to be one of ’em himself. ‘ But,’ says I, 4 Doc- 
tor, I don’t say there won’t be a little dancin’.’ 4 Don’t ! ’ 
says he, 4 for I want Letty to go,’ (she’s his granddaughter 
that’s been stayin’ with him,) 4 and Betty’s mighty fond of 
dancin’. You know,’ says the Doctor, 4 it isn’t my business, 
to settle whether other people’s children should dance or 
not.’ And the Doctor looked as if he should like to riga- 
doon and sashy across as well as the young one he was talkin’’ 
about. He’s got blood in him, the old Doctor has. I wish, 
our little man and him would swap pulpits.” 

Deacon Soper started and looked up into the Colonel’s 
face, as if to see whether he was in earnest. 

Mr. Silas Peckham and his lady joined the group. 

“ Is this to be a Temperance Celebration, Mrs. Sprowle ?” 
asked Mr. Silas Peckham. 

Mrs. Sprowle replied, 44 that there would be lemonade and 
srub for those that preferred such drinks, but that the 
Colonel had given folks to understand that he didn’t mean 
to set in judgment on the marriage in Canaan, and that 
those that didn’t like srub and such things would find some- 
thin’ that would suit them better.” 

Deacon Soper’s countenance assumed a certain air of re- 
strained cheerfulness. The conversation rose into one of 
its gusty paroxysms just then. Master H. Frederic got be- 
hind a door and began performing the experiment of stop- 
ping and unstopping his ears in rapid alternation, greatly 
rejoicing in the singular effect of mixed conversation chopped 
very small, "like the contents of a mince-pie, — or meat 
pie, as it is more forcibly called in the deep-rutted villages 
lying along the unsalted streams. All at once it grew silent 
just round the door, where it had been loudest, — and the 
silence spread itself like a stain, till it hushed everything 
but a few corner-duets. A dark, sad-looking, middle-aged 
gentleman entered the parlor, with a young lady on his arm, 
—his daughter, as it seemed, for she was not wholly unlike 
him in feature, and of the same dark complexion. 

“Dudley Venner!” exclaimed a dozen people, in startled,, 
but half-suppressed tones. 

44 What can have brought Dudley out to-night ? ” said J ef<- 


Y2 


ELSIE VENNER. 


ferson Buck, a young fellow, who had been interrupted in 
one of the corner-duets which he was executing in concert 
with Miss Susy Pettingill. 

“ How do I know, Jeff ? ” was Miss Susy’s answer. Then, 
after a pause, — ■“ Elsie made him come, I guess. Go ask 
Hr. Kittredge; he knows all about ’em both, they say.” 

Hr. Kittredge, the leading physician of Rockland, was 
a shrewd old man, who looked pretty keenly into his patients 
through his spectacles, and pretty widely at men, women, 
and things in general over them. Sixty-three years old, — 
just the year of the grand climacteric. A bald crown, as 
every doctor should have. A consulting practitioner’s 
mouth; that is, movable round the corners while the case is 
under examination, but both corners well drawn down and 
kept so when the final opinion is made up. In fact, the Hoc- 
tor was of ten sent for to act as “ eaounsel,” all over the 
county, and beyond it. He kept three or four horses, some- 
times riding in the saddle, commonly driving in a sulky, 
pretty fast, and looking straight before him, so that people 
got out of the way of bowing to him as he passed on the road. 
There was some talk about his not being so long-sighted as 
ether folks, but his old patients laughed and looked knowing 
when this was spoken of. 

The Hoctor knew a good many things besides how to drop 
tinctures and shake out powders. Thus, he knew a horse, 
and, what is harder to understand, a horse-dealer, and was a 
match for him. He knew what a nervous woman is, and 
how to manage her. He could tell at a glance when she is in 
that condition of unstable equilibrium in which a rough 
word is like a blow to her, and the touch of unmagnetized 
fingers reverses all her nervous currents. It is not every- 
body that enters into the soul of Mozart’s or Beethoven’s 
harmonies; and there are vital symphonies in B flat, and 
other low sad keys, which a doctor may know as little of as 
a hurdy-gurdy player of the essence of those divine musical 
mysteries. 

The Hoctor knew the difference between what men 
say and what they mean as well as most people. When 
he was listening to common talk, he was in the habit of 
looking over his spectacles ; if he lifted his head so as to look 
through them at the person talking, he was busier with that 
person’s thoughts than with his words. 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 73 

Jefferson Buck was not bold enough to confront the Doc* 
tor with Miss Susy’s question, for he did not look as if he 
were in the mood to answer queries put by curious young 
people. His eyes were fixed steadily on the dark girl, every 
movement of whom he seemed to follow. 

She was, indeed, an apparition of wild beauty, so unlike 
the girls about her that it seemed nothing more than natural,, 
that, when she moved, the groups should part to let her pass; 
through them, and that she should carry the center of all 
looks and thoughts with her. She was dressed to please her 
own fancy, evidently, with small regard to the modes de- 
clared correct by the Rockland milliners and mantua-makers- 
Her heavy black hair lay in a braided coil, with a long gold 
pin shot through it like a javelin. Round her neck was a 
golden torque, a round, cord-like chain, such as the Gauls 
used to wear : the “ Dying Gladiator ” has it. Her dress, 
was a grayish watered silk; her collar was pinned with a 
flashing diamond brooch, the stones looking as fresh as morn- 
ing dew-drops, but the silver setting of the past generation^ 
her arms were bare, round, but slender rather than large, in 
keeping with her lithe round figure. On her wrists she wore 
bracelets: one was a circlet of enameled scales; the other 
looked as if it might have been Cleopatra’s asp, with its; 
body turned to gold and its eyes to emeralds. 

Her father — for Dudley Venner was her father — looked 5 
like a man of culture and breeding, but melancholy and with 
a distracted air, as one whose life had met some fatal cross*, 
or blight. He saluted hardly anybody except his entertain- 
ers and the Doctor. One would have said, to look at him,, 
that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural 
enough to think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have 
been a freak of the dark girl’s which brought him there, for 
he had the air of a shy and sad-hearted recluse. 

It was hard to say what could have brought Elsie Venner 
to the party. Hardly anybody seemed to know her, and she 
seemed not at all disposed to make acquaintances. Here and 
there was one of the older girls from the Institute, but she 
appeared to have nothing in common with them. Even in 
the schoolroom, it may be remembered, she sat apart by her 
own choice, and now in the midst of the crowd she made a 
circle of isolation round herself. Drawing her arm out of 
her father’s she stood against the wall, and looked, with a 


174 


ELSIE VENNER. 


strange, cold glitter in her eyes, at the crowd which moved 
.and babbled before her. 

The old Doctor came up to her by-and-by. 

“ Well, Elsie, I am quite surprised to find you here. Do 
tell me how you happened to do such a good-natured thing 
as to let us see you at such a great party.” 

“ It’s been dull at the mansion-house,” she said, “ and I 
wanted to get out of it. It’s too lonely there, — there’s no- 
body to hate since Dick’s gone.” 

The Doctor laughed good-naturedly, as if this were an amus- 
ing bit of pleasantry, — but he lifted his head and dropped 
his eyes a little, so as to see her through his spectacles. 
She narrowed her lids slightly, as one often sees a sleepy cat 
narrow hers, — somewhat as you may remember our famous 
Margaret used to, if you remember her at all — so that her 
eyes looked very small, but bright as the diamonds on her 
breast. The old Doctor felt very oddly as she looked at him ; 
he did not like the feeling, so he dropped his head and lifted 
his eyes and looked at her over his spectacles again. 

“ And how have you all been at the mansion-house ? ” said 
The Doctor. 

“ Oh, well enough. But Dick’s gone, and there’s nobody 
left but Dudley and I and the people. I’m tired of it. 
What kills anybody quickest. Doctor ? ” Then, in a whisper, 

I ran away again the other day, you know.” 

“ Where did you go ? ” The Doctor spoke in a low, serious 
tone. 

“ Oh, to the old place. Here, I brought this for you.” 

The Doctor started as she handed him a flower of the 
Atragene Americana, for he knew that there was only one 
■spot where it grew, and that not one where any rash foot, 
least of all a thin-shod woman’s foot, should venture. 

“ How long were you gone ? ” said the Doctor. 

“ Only one night. You should have heard the horns blow- 
ing and the guns firing. Dudley was frightened out of his 
wits. Old Sophy told him she’d had a dream, and that I 
should be found in Dead Man’s Hollow, with a great rock 
lying on me. They hunted all over it, but they didn’t find 
me, — I was farther up.” 

Doctor Kittredge looked cloudy and worried while she was 
speaking, but forced a pleasant professional smile, as he said 
^cheerily, as if wishing to change the subject, — 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 


“ Have a good dance this evening, Elsie. The fiddlers are 
tuning up. Where’s the young master? Has he come yet? 
or is he going to be late, with the other great folks ? ” 

The girl turned away without answering and looked to- 
ward the door. 

The “great folks,” meaning the mansion-house gentry*, 
were just beginning to come; Dudley Venner and his daugh- 
ter had been the first of them. Judge Thornton, white- 
headed, fresh-faced, as good at sixty as he was at forty, with. 
a youngish second wife, and one noble daughter, Arabella*, 
who, they said, knew as much law as her father, a stately*. 
Portia-like girl, fit for a premier’s wife, not like to find her 
match even in the great cities she sometimes visted; the; 
Trecothicks, the family of a merchant, (in the larger sense,) 
who, having made himself rich enough by the time he had 
reached middle life, threw down his ledger as Sylla did his 
dagger, and retired to make a little paradise around him in 
one of the statliest residences of the town, a family inherit- 
ance; the Vaughans, an old Rockland race, descended from 
its first settlers, Toryish in tendency in Revolutionary times,, 
and barely escaping confiscation or worse; the Dunhams, a. 
new family, dating its gentility only as far back as the Hon- 
orable Washington Dunham, M. C., but turning out a clever 
boy or two that went to college, and some showy girls with 
white necks and fat arms who had picked up professional 
husbands : these were the principal mansion-house people.. 
All of them had made it a point to come ; and as each of them 
entered, it seemed to Colonel and Mrs. Sprowle that the: 
lamps burned up with a more cheerful light, and that the. 
fiddles which sounded from the uncarpeted room were all 
half a tone higher and half a beat quicker. 

Mr. Bernard came in later than any of them ; he had been 
busy with his new duties. He looked well; and this is say- 
ing a good deal; for nothing but a gentleman is endurable 
in full dress. Hair that masses well, a head set on with an 
air, a neckerchief tied cleverly by an easy, practiced hand,, 
close-fitting gloves, feet well shaped and well covered, — these 
advantages can make us forgive the odious sable broadcloth 
suit, which appears to have been adopted by society on the: 
same principle that condemned all the Venetian gondolas to 
perpetual and uniform blackness. Mr. Bernard, introduced 
by Mr. Geordi-e, made his bow to the Colonel and his lady 


ELSIE VENNER. 


V6 

and to Miss Matilda, from whom he got a particularly gra* 
mous courtesy, and then began looking about him for acquaint- 
ances. He found two or three faces he knew, — many more 
strangers. There was Silas Peckham, — there was no mis- 
taking him ; there was the inelastic amplitude of Mrs. Peck- 
ham; few of the Apollinean girls, of course, they not being 
recognized members of society, — but there is one with the 
flame in her cheeks and the fire in her eyes, the girl of vigor- 
ous tints and emphatic outlines, whom we saw entering the 
schoolroom the other day. Old Judge Thornton has his eyes 
on her, and the Colonel steals a look every now and then 
at the red brooch which lifts itself so superbly into the light, 
as if he thought it a wonderfully becoming ornament. Mr. 
Bernard himself was not displeased with the general effect of 
the rich-blooded schoolgirl, as she stood under the bright 
lamps, fanning herself in the warm, languid air, fixed in a 
kind of passionate surprise at the new life which seemed to 
be flowering out in her consciousness. Perhaps he looked at 
her somewhat steadily, as some others had done ; at any rate, 
she seemed to feel that she was looked at, as people often do, 
and, turning her eyes suddenly on him, caught his own on 
her face, gave him a half-bashful smile, and threw in a blush 
involuntarily which made it more charming. 

“ What can I do better,” he said to himself, “ than have a 
dance with Rosa Milburn ? ” So he carried his handsome 
pupil into the next room and took his place with her in a 
cotillion. Whether the breath of the Goddess of Love could 
intoxicate like the cup of Circe, — whether a woman is ever 
phosphorescent with the luminous vapor of life that she ex- 
hales, — these and other questions which relate to occult in- 
fluences exercised by certain women, we will not now discuss. 
It is enough that Mr. Bernard was sensible of a strange fas- 
cination, not wholly new to him, nor unprecedented in the 
history of human experience, but always a revelation when 
it comes over us for the first or the hundredth time, so pale 
is the most recent memory by the side of the passing moment 
with the flush of any new-born passion on its cheek. Re- 
member that Nature makes every man love all women, and 
trusts the trivial matter of special choice to the commonest 
accident. 

If Mr. Bernard had had nothing to distract his attention, 
lie might have thought too much about his handsome partner. 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 77 

and then gone home and dreamed about her, which is always 
dangerous, and waked up thinking of her still, and then be- 
gun to get deeply interested in her studies, and so on, 
through the whole syllogism which ends in Nature’s supreme 
quod erat demonstrandum. What was there to distract him 
or disturb him ? He did not know, — but there was something. 
This sumptuous creature, this Eve just within the gate of an 
untried Paradise, untutored in the ways of the world, but 
on tiptoe to reach the fruit of the tree of knowledge, — alive 
to the moist vitality of that warm atmosphere palpitating 
with voices and music, as the flower of some dioecious plant 
which has grown in a lone comer and suddenly unfolding 
its corolla on some hot-breathing June evening, feels that 
the air is perfumed with strange odors and loaded with, 
golden dust wafted from those other blossoms with which its 
double life is shared, — this almost over-womanized woman 
might well have bewitched him, but that he had a vagu6 
sense of a counter-charm. It was, perhaps, only the same- 
consciousness that someone was looking at him which he 
himself had just given occasion to in his partner. Presently,, 
in one of the turns of the dance, he felt his eyes drawn to- 
a figure he had not distinctly recognized, though he had 
dimly felt its presence, and saw that Elsie Venner was look- 
ing at him as if she saw nothing else but him. He was not 
a nervous person, like the poor lady teacher, yet the glitter 
of" the diamond eyes affected him strangely. It seemed to 
disenchant the air, so full a moment before of strange at- 
tractions. He became silent, and dreamy, as it were. The 
round-limbed beauty at his side crushed her gauzy draperies 
against him, as they trod the figure of the dance together, 
but it was no more to him than if an old nurse had laid her 
hand on his sleeve. The young girl chafed at his seeming- 
neglect, and her imperious blood mounted into her cheeks; 
but he appeared unconscious of it. 

“ There is one of our young ladies I must speak to,” he 
said, — and was just leaving his partner’s side. 

“ Four hands all round ! ” shouted the first violin, — and 
Mr. Bernard found himself seized and whirled in a circle- 
out of which he could not escape, and then forced to “ cross 
over,” and then to “ dozy do,” as the maestro had it, — and 1 
when, on getting back to his place, he looked for Elsie Ven- 
ner, she was gone. 


78 


ELSIE VENNER. 


The dancing went on briskly. Some of the old folks looked 
on, others conversed in groups and pairs, and so the evening 
wore along until a little after ten o’clock. About this time 
there was noticed an increased bustle in the passages, with 
a considerable opening and shutting of doors. Presently it 
began to be whispered about that they were going to have 
supper. Many, who had never been to any large party be- 
fore, held their breath for a moment at this announcement. 
It was rather with a tremulous interest than with open 
.hilarity that the rumor was generally received. 

One point the Colonel had entirely forgotten to settle. It 
was a point involving not merely propriety, but perhaps 
principle also, or at least the good report of the house, — and 
lie had never thought to arrange it. He took Judge Thorn- 
ton aside and whispered the important question to him, — in 
his distress of mind, mistaking pockets and taking out his 
bandanna instead of his white handkerchief to wipe his fore- 
head. 

“ Judge,” he said, “ do you think, that, before we com- 
mence refreshing ourselves at the tables, it would be the 
proper thing to — crave a — to request Deacon Soper or 
some other elderly person — to ask a blessing ? ” 

The Judge looked as grave as if he were about giving the 
opinion of the Court in the great India-rubber case. 

“ On the whole,” he answered, after a pause, “ I should 
think it might, perhaps, be dispensed with on this occasion. 
Young folks are noisy, and it is awkward to have talking 
.and laughing going on while a blessing is being asked. Un- 
less a clergyman is present and makes a point of it, I think 
it will hardly be expected.” 

The Colonel was infinitely relieved. “ Judge, will you 
take Mrs. Sprowle in to supper? ” And the Colonel returned 
the compliment by offering his arm to Mrs. Judge Thorn- 
ton. 

The door of the supper-room was now open, and the com- 
pany, following the lead of the host and hostess, began to 
stream into it, until it was pretty well filled. 

There was an awful kind of pause. Many were beginning 
to drop their heads and shut their eyes, in anticipation of 
the usual petition before a meal ; some expected the music to 
strike up, — others, that an oration would now be delivered' 
hy the Colonel. 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 


79 


4< Make yourselves at home, ladies and gentlemen,” said the 
Colonel ; “ good things were made to eat, and you’re wel- 
come to all you see before you.” 

So saying, he attacked a huge turkey which stood at the 
head of the table; and his example being followed first by 
the bold, then by the doubtful, and lastly by the timid, the 
clatter soon made the circuit of the tables. Some were 
shocked, however, as the Colonel had feared they would be, 
at the want of the customary invocation. Widow Leech, a 
kind of relation, who had to be invited, and who came with 
her old, back-country-looking string of gold beads round her 
neck, seemed to feel very serious about it. 

“ If she’d ha’ known that folks would begrutch cravin’ a 
blessin’ over sech a heap o’ provisions, she’d rather ha’ staid 
t’ home. It was a bad sign, when folks wasn’t grateful for 
the baounties of Providence.” 

The elder Miss Spinney, to whom she made this remark, 
assented to it, at the same time ogling a piece of frosted 
cake, which she presently appropriated with great refinement 
of manner, — taking it between her thumb and forefinger, 
keeping the others well spread and the little finger in ex- 
treme divergence, with a graceful undulation of the neck, 
and a queer little sound in her throat, as of an “ m ” that 
wanted to get out and perished in the attempt. 

The tables now presented an animated spectacle. Young 
fellows of the more dashing sort, with high stand-up collars 
and voluminous bows to their neckerchiefs, distinguished 
themselves by cutting up fowls and offering portions thereof 
to the buxom girls these knowing ones had commonly se- 
lected. 

“ A bit of the wing, Roxy, or of the — under limb ? ” 

The first laugh broke out at this, but it was premature, 
a sporadic laugh, as Dr. Kittredge would have said, which 
did not become epidemic. People were very solemn as yet, 
many of them being new to such splendid scenes, and 
crushed, as it were, in the presence of so much crockery and 
so many silver spoons, and such a variety of unusual viands 
and beverages. When the laugh rose around Roxy and her 
saucy beau, several looked in that direction with an anxious 
expression, as if something had happened, — a lady fainted, 
for instance, or a couple of lively fellows come to high 
words. 


80 


ELSIE VENNER. 


“ Young folks will be young folks,” said Deacon Soper. 
“ No harm done. Least said soonest mended.” 

“ Have some of these shell-oysters ? ” said the Colonel to> 
Mrs. Trecothick. 

A delicate emphasis on the word shell implied that the 
Colonel knew what was what. To the New England inland 
native, beyond the reach of the east winds, the oyster un- 
conditioned, the oyster absolute, without a qualifying adjec- 
tive, is the pickled oyster. Mrs. Trecothick, who knew very 
well that an oyster long out of his shell (as is apt to be the 
case with the rural bivalve) gets homesick and loses his 
sprightliness, replied, with the pleasantest smile in the world, 
that the chicken she had been helped to was too delicate to 
be given up even for the greater rarity. But the w T ord 
“ shell-oysters ” had been overheard ; and there was a per- 
ceptible crowding movement towards their newly discovered 
habitat, a large soup tureen. 

Silas Peckham had meantime fallen upon another locality 
of these recent mollusks. He said nothing, but helped him- 
self freely, and made a sign to Mrs. Peckham. 

“ Lorindy,” he whispered, “ shell-oysters ! ” 

And ladled them out to her largely, without betraying 
any emotion, just as if they had been the natural inland 
or pickled article. 

After the more solid portion of the banquet had been duly 
honored, the cakes and sweet preparations of various kinds 
began to get their share of attention. There were great 
cakes and little cakes, cakes with raisins in them, cakes with, 
currants, and cakes without either ; there were brown 
cakes and yellow cakes, frosted cakes, glazed cakes, 
hearts and rounds, and jumbles, which playful youth slip 
over the forefinger before spoiling their annular outline. 
There were molds of blo’monje, of the arrowroot variety, 
— that being undistinguishable from such as is made with 
Russia isinglass. There were jellies, which had been shak- 
ing, all the time the young folks were dancing in the next 
room, as if they were balancing to partners. There were 
built-up fabrics, called Charlottes, caky externally, pulpy 
within; there were also marangs, and likewise custards, — 
some of the indolent-fluid sort, others firm, in which every 
stroke of the teaspoon left a smooth, conchoidal surface like 
the fracture of chalcedony, with here and there a little eye 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 81 

like what one sees in cheeses. Nor was that most wonderful 
object of domestic art called trifle wanting, with its charm- 
ing confusion of cream and cake and almonds and jam and 
jelly and wine and cinnamon and froth; nor yet the marvel- 
ous floating-island, — name suggestive of all that is romantic 
in the imaginations of youthful palates. 

“ It must have cost you a sight of work, to say nothin’ 
of money, to get all this beautiful confectionery made for 
the party,” said Mrs. Crane to Mrs. Sprowle. 

“ Well, it cost some consid’able labor, no doubt,” said Mrs. 
Sprowle. “ Matilda and our girls and I made ’most all the 
cake, with our own hands, and we all feel some tired ; but if 
*sl£s get what suits ’em, we don’t begrudge the time nor 
the work. But I do feel thirsty,” said the poor lady, “ and 
I thjnk a glass of srub would do my throat good; it’s dread- 
ful dry. Mr. Peckham, would you be so polite as to pass me 
a glass of srub ? ” 

Silas Peckham bowed with great alacrity, and took from 
the table a small glass cup, containing a fluid reddish in 
Jiue and subacid in taste. This was srub, a beverage in local 
repute, of questionable nature, but suspected of owing its 
tint and sharpness to some kind of syrup derived from the 
maroore-colored fruit of the sumac. There were similar 
small cups on the table filled with lemonade, and here and 
there a decanter of Madeira wine, of the Marsala kind, which 
some prefer to, and many more cannot distinguish from, 
that which comes from the Atlantic island. 

“ Take a glass of wine, J udge,” said the Colonel ; “ here 
is an article that I rather think ’ll suit you.” 

The judge knew something of wines, and could tell all the 
famous old Madeiras from each other, — “ Eclipse,” “ Juno,” 
the almost fabulously scarce and precious “ White-top,” and 
the rest. He struck the nativity of the Mediterranean Ma- 
deira before it had fairly moistened his lip. 

“ A sound wine. Colonel, and I should think of a genuine 
vintage. Your very good health.” 

“ Deacon Soper,” said the Colonel, “ here is some Madary 
Judge Thornton recommends. Let me fill you a glass of it.” 

The Deacon’s eyes glistened. He was one of those con- 
sistent Christians who stick firmly by the first miracle and 
Paul’s advice to Timothy. 

“ A little good wine won’t hurt anybody,” said the Deacon. 


82 


ELSIE VENNER. 


“ Plenty, — plenty, — plenty. There ! ” He had not with- 
drawn his glass, while the Colonel was pouring, for fear it 
should spill; and now it was running over. 

-It is very odd how all a man’s philosophy and the- 
ology are at the mercy of a few drops of a fluid which the 
chemists say consists of nothing but C 4 , O a , H 6 . The 
Deacon’s theology fell off several points towards latitudina- 
rianism in the course of the next ten minutes. He had a 
deep inward sense that everything was as it should be, hu- 
man nature included. The little accidents of humanity, 
known collectively to moralists as sin, looked very venial tO' 
his growing sense of universal brotherhood and benevo- 
lence. 

“ It will all come right,” the Deacon said to himself, — “ I 
feel a joyful conviction that everything is for the best. I 
am favored with a blessed peace of mind, and a very precious- 
season of good feelin’ toward my fellow-creturs.” 

A lusty young fellow happened to make a quick step back- 
ward just at that instant, and put his heel, with his weight 
on top of it, upon the Deacon’s toes. 

“ Aigh ! What the d’ d’ didos are y’ abaout with them great 
huffs o’ yourn ? ” said the Deacon, with an expression upon 
his features not exactly that of peace and good-will to men. 
The lusty young fellow apologized; but the Deacon’s face 
did not come right, and his theology backed round several 
points in the direction of total depravity. 

Some of the dashing young men in stand-up collars and 
extensive neck-ties, encouraged by Mr. Geordie, made quite 
free with the “ Madary,” and even induced some of the more- 
stylish girls — not of the mansion-house set, but of the tip- 
top two-story families — to taste a little. Most of these young’ 
ladies made faces at it, and declared it was u perfectly hor- 
rid,” with that aspect of veracity peculiar to their age and 
sex. 

About this time a movement was made on the part of 
some of the mansion-house people to leave the supper-table.. 
Miss Jane Trecothick had quietly hinted to her mother that 
she had had enough of it. Miss Arabella Thornton had whis- 
pered to her father that he had better adjourn this court to 
the next room. There were signs of migration, — a loosening 
of people in their places, — a looking about for arms to hitch; 
on to. 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 13 

u Stop ! ” said the Colonel. “ There’s something coming 
yet. Ice-cream ! ” 

The great folks saw that the play was not over yet, and 
that it was only polite to stay and see it out. The word 
“ Ice-Cream ” was no sooner whispered than it passed from 
one to another all down the tables. The effect was what 
might have been anticipated. Many of the guests had never 
seen this celebrated product of human skill, and to all the 
two-story population of Rockland it was the last expression 
of the art of pleasing and astonishing the human palate. 
Its appearance had been deferred for several reasons: first, 
because everybody would have attacked it, if it had come in 
-with the other luxuries; secondly because undue apprehen- 
sions were entertained (owing to want of experience) of its 
•tendency to deliquesce and resolve itself with alarming ra- 
pidity into puddles Of creamy fluid; and, thirdly, because 
the surprise would make a grand climax to finish off the 
banquet. 

There is something so audacious in the conception of ice- 
-cream, that it is not strange that a population undebauched 
-by the luxury of great cities looks upon it with a kind of 
-awe and speaks of it with a certain emotion. This defiance 
of the seasons, forcing Nature to do her work of congelation 
in the face of her sultriest noon, might well inspire a timid 
mind with fear lest human art were revolting against the 
Higher Powers, and raise the same scruples which resisted 
the use of ether and chloroform in certain contingencies. 
Whatever may be the cause, it is well known that the an- 
nouncement at any private rural entertainment that there 
is to be ice-cream produces an immediate and profound im- 
pression. It may be remarked, as aiding this impression, 
that exaggerated ideas are entertained as to the dangerous 
effects this congealed food may produce on persons not in 
the most robust health. 

There was silence as the pyramids of ice were placed on 
the table, everybody looking on in admiration. The Colonel 
took a knife and assailed the one at the head of the table. 
When he tried to cut off a slice, it didn’t seem to understand 
it, however, and only tipped, as if it wanted to upset. The 
'Colonel attacked it on the other side and it tipped just as 
badly the other way. It was awkward for the Colonel. 

Permit me,” said the Judge,— and he took the knife and 


84 


ELSIE YENNER. 


struck a sharp slanting stroke which sliced off a piece just 
of the right size, and offered it to Mrs. Sprowle. This act 
of dexterity was much admired by the company. 

The tables were all alive again. 

“ Lorindy, here’s a plate of ice-cream,” said Silas Peck- 
ham. 

“ Come, Mahaly,” said a fresh-looking young fellow with, 
a saucerful in each hand, “ here’s your ice-cream; — let’s go 
in the corner and have a celebration, us two.” And the old 
green de-laine, with the young curves under it to make it 
sit well, moved off as pleased apparently as if it had been 
silk velvet with thousand-dollar laces over it. 

“ Oh, now, Miss Green ! do you think it’s safe to put that 
cold stuff into your stomick?” said the Widow Leech to a 
young married lady, who, finding the air rather warm, 
thought a little ice would cool her down very nicely. “ It’s 
jest like eatin’ snowballs. You don’t look very rugged; and 
I should be dreadful afeard, if it was you ” 

“ Carrie,” said old Dr. Kittredge, who had overheard this,, 
— “ how well you’re looking this evening ! But you must be 
tired and heated ; — sit down here, and let me give you a good 
slice of ice-cream. How you young folks do grow up, to be 
sure! I don’t feel quite certain whether it’s you or your 
older sister, but I know it’s somebody I call Carrie, and that 
I’ve known ever since ” 

A sound something between a howl and an oath startled 
the company and broke off the Doctor’s sentence. Every- 
body’s eyes turned in the direction from which it came. A 
group instantly gathered round the person who had uttered 
it, who was no other than Deacon Soper. 

“ He’s chokin’ ! he’s chokin’ ! ” was the first exclamation,. 
— “ slap him on the back ! ” 

Several heavy fists beat such a tattoo on his spine that the 
Deacon felt as if at least one of his vertebrae would come 
up. 

“He’s black in the face,” said Widow Leech, — “he’s swal- 
lered somethin’ the wrong way. Where’s the Doctor? — let 
the Doctor get to him, can’t ye ? ” 

“ If you will move, my good lady, perhaps I can,” said 
Doctor Kittredge, in a calm tone of voice. — “ He’s not chok- 
ing, my friends,” the Doctor added immediately, when he- 
got sight of him. 


THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 85 

“ It’s apoplexy, — I told you so, — don’t you see how red 
he is in the face ? ” said old Mrs. Peake, a famous woman 
for “ nussin ” sick folks — determined to be a little ahead of 
the Doctor. 

“ It’s not apoplexy,” said Dr. Kittredge. 

“What is it. Doctor? what is it? Will he die? Is he 
dead? — Here’s his poor wife, the Widow Soper that is to be, 
if she a’n’t a’ready ” 

“ Do be quiet, my good woman,” said Dr. Kittredge. — 
“Nothing serious, I think, Mrs. Soper. — Deacon!” 

The sudden attack of Deacon Soper had begun with the 
extraordinary sound mentioned above. His features had im- 
mediately assumed an expression of intense pain, his eyes 
staring wildly, and, clapping his hands to his face, he had 
rocked his head backward and forward in speechless agony. 

At the Doctor’s sharp appeal the Deacon lifted his head. 

“ It’s all right,” said the Doctor, as soon as he saw his 
face. “ The Deacon had a smart attack of neuralgic pain. 
That’s all. Very severe, but not at all dangerous.” 

The Doctor kept his countenance, but his diaphragm was 
shaking the change in his waistcoat-pockets with subter- 
ranean laughter. He had looked through his spectacles and 
-seen at once what had happened. The Deacon, not being in 
the habit of taking his nourishment in the congealed state, 
had treated the ice-cream as a pudding of a rare species, and, 
to make sure of doing himself justice in its distribution, had 
taken a large mouthful of it without the least precaution. 
The consequence was a sensation as if a dentist were killing 
the nerves of twenty-five teeth at once with hot irons, or 
oold ones, which would hurt rather worse. 

The Deacon swallowed something with a spasmodic effort, 
and recovered pretty soon and received the congratulations 
of his friends. There were different versions of the expres- 
sions he had used at the onset of his complaint, — some of 
the reported exclamations involving a breach of propriety, 
to say the least, — but it was agreed that a man in an attack 
of neuralgy wasn’t to be judged of by the rules that applied 
to other folks. 

The company soon after this retired from the supper-room. 
The mansion-house gentry took their leave, and the two-story 
people soon followed. Mr. Bernard had stayed an hour or two, 
and left soon after he found that Elsie Venner and her 


86 


ELSIE VENNER. 


father had disappeared. As he passed by the dormitory of 
the Institute, he saw a light glimmering from one of its 
upper rooms, where the lady-teacher was still waking. His, 
heart ached, when he remembered, that, through all these 
hours of gayety, or what was meant for it, the patient girl 
had been at work in her little chamber; and he looked up 
at the silent stars, as if to see that they were watching over 
her. The planet Mars was burning like a red coal; the nor- 
thern constellation was slanting downward about its central 
point of flame ; and while he looked, a falling star slid from 
the zenith and was lost. 

He reached his chamber and was soon dreaming over the 
Event of the Season. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE MORNING AFTER. 

Colonel Sprowle’s family arose late the next morning. 
The fatigues and excitements of the evening and the prepara- 
tion for it were followed by a natural collapse, of which 
somnolence was a leading symptom. The sun shone into-' 
the window at a pretty well opened angle when the Colonel 
first found himself sufficiently awake to address his yet 
slumbering spouse. 

“ Sally ! ” said the Colonel, in a voice that was a little 
husky, — for he had finished off the evening with an extra 
glass or two of “ Madary ,” and had a somewhat rusty and 
headachy sense of renewed existence, on greeting the rather 
advanced dawn, — “ Sally ! ” 

“Take care o’ them custard cups! There they go!” 

Poor Mrs. Sprowle was fighting the party over in her 
dream ; and as the visionary custard-cups crashed down: 
through one lobe of her brain into another, she gave a start 
as if an inch of lightning from a quart Leyden jar had 
been jumped into one of her knuckles, with its sudden and 
lively “ poonk ! ” 

“ Sally ! ” said the Colonel, — “ wake up, wake up ! What 
V y’ dreamin’ abaout ? ” 

Mrs. Sprowle raised herself, by a sort of spasm, sur son 
seant, as they say in France, — up on end, as we have it in 
Hew England. She looked first to the left, then to the right, 
then straight before her, apparently without seeing any- 
thing, and at last slowly settled down, with her two eyes,, 
blank of any particular meaning, directed upon the colonel. 

“ What time is it ? ” she said. 

“ Ten o’clock. What V been dreamin’ abaout? Y’ give a 
jump like a hoppergrass. Wake up, wake up! Th’ party’s 
over, and y’ been asleep all the morain’. The party’s over, 
I tell ye! Wake up!” 

“ Over ! ” said Mrs. Sprowle, who began to define her posi- 


87 


; 88 


ELSIE VENNER. 


tion at last, — “ over ! I should think ’fwas time ’twas over ! 
It lasted a hundud year. I’ve been workin’ for that party 
longer ’n Methuselah’s lifetime, sence I been asleep. The pies 
wouldn’ bake, and the blo’monge wouldn’ set, and the ice- 
cream wouldn’t freeze, and all the folks kep’ cornin’ ’n’ cornin’ 
’n’ cornin’ — everybody I ever knew in all my life — some of ’em 
’s been dead this twenty year ’n’ more, — ’n’ nothin’ for ’em 
to eat nor drink. The fire wouldn’ burn to cook anything, 
all we could do. We blowed with the belluses, ’n’ we stuffed 
in paper ’n’ pitch-pine kindlin’s, but nothin’ could make that 
fire burn; ’n’ all the time the folks kep’ comin, as if they’d 
never stop, — nothin’ for ’em but empty dishes, ’n’ all the 
borrowed chaney slippin’ round on the waiters ’n’ chippin’ 
’n’ crackin’. — I wouldn’ go through what I been through 
t’-night for all the money ’n the Bank, — I do believe it’s 
harder t’ have a party than t’ ” 

Mrs. Sprowle stated the case strongly. 

The Colonel said he didn’t know how that might be. She 
was a better judge than he was. It was bother enough, any- 
how, and he was glad that it was over. After this the 
worthy pair commenced preparations for rejoining the wak- 
ing world, and in due time proceeded downstairs. 

Everybody was late that morning, and nothing had got 
put to rights. The house looked as if a small army had 
been quartered in it overnight. The tables were of course 
in huge disorder, after the protracted assault they had un- 
dergone. There had been a great battle evidently, and it 
had gone against the provisions. Some points had been 
stormed, and all their defenses annihilated, but here and 
there were centers of resistance which had held out against 
all attacks, — large rounds of beef, and solid loads of cake, 
against which the inexperienced had wasted their energies 
in the enthusiasm of youth or uninformed maturity, while 
the longer-headed guests were making discoveries of “ shell- 
oysters ” and “ patridges ” and similar delicacies. 

The breakfast was naturally of a somewhat fragmentary 
character. A chicken that had lost his legs in the service 
of the preceding campaign was once more put on duty. A 
-great ham, stuck with cloves, as St. Sebastian was with 
arrows, was again offered for martyrdom. It would have 
been a pleasant sight for a medical man of a speculative 
turn to have seen the prospect before the Colonel’s family 


THE MORNING AFTER. 


SD 

of the next week’s breakfasts, dinners, and suppers. The- 
trail that one of these great rural parties leaves after it 
is one of its most formidable considerations. Every door 
handle in the house is suggestive of sweetmeats for the next 
week, at least. ^ The most unnatural articles of diet displace- 
the frugal but nutritious food of unconvulsed periods of ex* 
istence. If there is a walking infant about the house it 
will certainly have a more less fatal fit from overmuch of 
some indigestible delicacy. Before the week is out, every- 
body will be tired to death of sugary forms of nourishment,, 
and long to see the last of the remnants of the festival. 

The family had not yet arrived at this condition. On the 
contrary, the first inspection of the tables suggested the 
prospect of days of unstinted luxury; and the younger por- 
tion of the household, especially, were in a state of great 
excitement as the account of stock was taken with reference* 
to future internal investments. Some curious facts came- 
to light during these researches. 

“ Where’s all the oranges gone to ? ” said Mrs. Sprowle- 
“ I expected there’d be ever so many of ’em left. I didn’t 
see many of the folks eatin’ oranges. Where’s the skins of' 
’em ? There ought to be six dozen orange-skins round 
on the plates, and there a’n’t one dozen. And all the small 
cakes, too, and all the sugar things that was stuck on the- 
big cakes. Has anybody counted the spoons? Some of ’em 
got swallered, perhaps. I hope they was plated ones, if they 
did!” 

The failure of the morning’s orange crop, and the deficit 
in other expected residual delicacies were not very difficult to 
account for. In many of the two-story Rockland families, 
and in those favored households of the neighboring villages 
whose members had been invited to the great party, there 
was a very general excitement among the younger people on 
the morning after the great event. “ Did y’ bring home some- 
thin’ from the party? What is it? What is it? Is it f rut- 
cake? Is it nuts and oranges and apples? Give me somef 
Give me some ! ” Such a concert of treble voices uttering- 
accents like these had not been heard since the great Tem- 
perance Festival, with the celebrated 11 eolation ” in the- 
open air, under the trees of the Parnassian Grove, — as the 
place was christened by the young ladies of the Institute- 
The cry of the children was not in vain. From the pockets; 


$0 


ELSIE VENNER. 


•of demure fathers, from the bags of sharp-eyed spinsters, 
from the folded handkerchiefs of light-fingered sisters, from 
the tall hats of sly-winking brothers, there was a resurrec- 
tion of the missing oranges and cakes and sugar things in 
many a rejoicing family circle, enough to astonish the most 
hardened “ caterer ” that ever contracted to feed a thousand 
people under canvas. 

The tender recollection of those dear little ones whom ex- 
treme youth or other pressing considerations detain from 
^scenes of festivity — a trait of affection by no means uncom- 
mon among our thoughtful people — dignifies those social 
meetings where it is manifested, and sheds a ray of sun- 
shine on our common nature. It is “ an oasis in the desert,” 
— to use the striking expression of the last year’s “ V aledic- 
torian ” of the Apollinean Institute. In the midst of so 
much that is purely selfish, it is delightful to meet such dis- 
interested care for others. When a large family of children 
^are expecting a parent’s return from an entertainment, it 
will often require great exertions on his part to freight him- 
self so as to meet their reasonable expectations. A few 
rules are worth remembering by all who attend anniversary 
-dinners in Faneuil Hall, or elsewhere. Thus: Lobsters’ 
claws are always acceptable to children of all ages. Oranges 
.and apples are to be taken one at time, until the coat pock- 
ets begin to become inconveniently heavy. Cakes are in- 
jured by sitting upon them; it is, therefore, well to carry a 
stout tin box of a size to hold as many pieces as there are 
children in the domestic circle. A very pleasant amuse- 
ment, at the close of one of these banquets, is grabbing for 
the flowers with which the table is embellished. These will 
please the ladies at home very greatly, and, if the children 
are at the same time abundantly supplied with fruit, nuts, 
cakes, and any little ornamental articles of confectionery 
which are of a nature to be unostentatiously removed, the 
kind-hearted parent will make a whole household happy with- 
out any additional expense beyond the outlay for his 
ticket. 

There were fragmentary delicacies enough left, of one 
kind and another, at any rate to make all the Colonel’s 
ffamily uncomfortable for the next week. It bid fair to 
“take as long to get rid of the remains of the great party as 
it had taken to make ready for it. 


THE MORNING AFTER. 


91 


In the meantime Mr. Bernard had been dreaming, as* 
young men dream, of gliding shapes with bright eyes and 
burning cheeks, strangely blended with red planets and hiss- 
ing meteors, and, shining over all, the white, un wandering: 
star of the North, girt with its tethered constellations. 

After breakfast, he walked into the parlor, where he found 
Miss Darley. She was alone, and, holding a schoolbook in 
her hand, was at work with one of the morning lessons. She' 
hardly noticed him as he entered, being very busy with 
her book — and he paused a moment before speaking, and 
looked at her with a kind of reverence. It would not have- 
been strictly true to call her beautiful. For years, — since her 
earliest womanhood, — those slender hands had taken the 
bread which repaid the toil of heart and brain from the 
coarse palms which offered it in the world’s rude market. It: 
was not for herself alone that she had bartered away the- 
life of her youth, that she had breathed the hot air of school- 
rooms, that she had forced her intelligence to posture before- 
her will, as the exigencies of her place required, — waking to 
her mental labor, — sleeping, to dream of problems, — rolling up- 
the stone of education for an endless twelvemonth’s term,, 
to find it at the bottom of the hill again when another year- 
called her to its renewed duties, — schooling her temper in 
unending inward and outward conflicts, until neither dull- 
ness nor obstinacy nor ingratitude nor insolence could reach' 
her serene self-possession. Not for herself alone. Poorly 
as her prodigal labors were repaid in proportion to the waste- 
of life they cost, her value was too well established to leave 
her without what, under other circumstances, would have 
been a more than sufficient compensation. But there were 
others who looked to her in their need. And so the modest 
fountain which might have been filled to its brim was con- 
tinually drained through silent flowing, hidden sluices. 

Out of such a life, inherited from a race which had lived 
in conditions not unlike her own, beauty, in the common 
sense of the term, could hardly find leisure to develop and 
shape itself. For it must be remembered that symmetry 
and elegance of features and figure, like perfectly-formed 
crystals in the mineral world, are reached only by insuring- 
a certain necessary repose to individuals and to genera- 
tions. 

Human beauty is an agricultural product in the country*. 


92 


ELSIE VENNER. 


•growing up in men and women as in corn and cattle, where 
the soil is good. It is a luxury almost monopolized by the 
Tich in cities, bred under glass, like their forced pineapples 
and peaches. Both in city and country, the evolution of 
physical harmonies which make music to our eyes requires a 
combination of favorable circumstances, of which alterna- 
tions of unburdened tranquillity with intervals of varied ex- 
citement of mind and body are among the most important. 
Where sufficient excitement is wanting, as often hap'pens 
in the country, the features, however, rich in red and white, 
get heavy, and the movements sluggish; where excitement 
is furnished in excess, as is frequently the case in cities, 
the contours and colors are impoverished, and the nerves 
begin to make their existence known to the consciousness, 
as the face very soon informs us. 

Helen Darley could not, in the nature of things, have pos- 
sessed the kind of beauty which pleases the common taste. 
Her eye was calm, sad-looking, her features very still, except 
when her pleasant smile changed them for a moment; all 
her outlines were delicate, her voice was very gentle, but 
somewhat subdued by years of thoughtful labor, and on her 
smooth forehead one little hinted line whispered already that 
Care was beginning to mark the trace which time sooner or 
later would make a furrow. She could not be a beauty; if she 
had been, it would have been much harder for many persons 
-to be interested in her. For, although in the abstract we 
all love beauty, and although, if we were sent naked souls 
into some ultramundane warehouse of soulless bodies and 
told to select one to our liking, we should each choose a 
handsome one, and never think of the consequences, — it is 
quite certain that beauty carries an atmosphere of repulsion 
as well as attraction with it, alike in both sexes. We may 
he well assured that there are many persons who no more 
think of specializing their love of the other sex upon one 
endowed with signal beauty, than we think of wanting great 
diamonds or thousand-dollar horses. No man or woman 
-can appropriate beauty without paying for it, — in endow- 
ments, in fortune, in position, in self-surrender, or other 
valuable stock; and there are a great many who are too 
poor, too ordinary, too humble, too busy, too proud, to pay 
any of these prices for it. So the unbeautiful get many more 
lovers than the beauties; only, as there are more of them, 


THE MORNING AFTER. 93‘ 

their lovers are spread thinner and do not make so much 
show. 

The young master stood looking at Helen Darley with a 
kind of tender admiration. She was such a picture of the 
martyr by the slow social combustive process, that it almost 
seemed to him that he could see a pale lambent nimbus 
around her head. 

“ I did not see you at the great party last evening,” he 
said presently. 

She looked up and answered, “ No. I have not much taste 
for such large companies. Besides, I do not feel as if my 
time belonged to me after it has been paid for. There is 
always something to do, some lesson or exercise, — and it so 
happened I was very busy last night with the new problems- 
in geometry. I hope you had a good time.” 

“Very. Two or three of our girls were there. Rosa Mil- 
burn. What a beauty she is! I wonder what she feeds on! 
Wine and musk, and chloroform and coals of fire, I believe; 
I didn’t think there was such color and flavor in a woman 
outside the tropics.” 

Miss Darley smiled rather faintly; the imagery was not 
just to her taste: femineity often finds it very hard to accept 
the fact of muliebrity. . 

“ Was ” 

She stopped short; but her question had asked itself. 

“Elsie there? She was for an hour or so. She looked 
frightfully handsome. I meant to have spoken to her, but 
she slipped away before I knew it.” 

“ I thought she meant to go to the party,” said Miss Dar- 
ley. “ Did she look at you ? ” 

“She did. Why?” 

“ And you did not speak to her ? ” 

“No. I should have spoken to her, but she was gone when 
I looked for her. A strange creature! Isn’t there an odd 
sort of fascination about her? You have not explained all 
the mystery about the girl. What does she come to this 
school for? She seems to do pretty much as she likes about 
studying.” 

Miss Darley answered in very low tones. “ It was a 
fancy of hers to come, and they let her have her way. I 
don’t know what there is about her, except that she seems to 
take my life out of me when she looks at me. I don’t liko 


94 


ELSIE YENNER. 


to ask other people about our girls. She says very little to 
anybody, and studies, or makes believe to study, almost what 
•she likes. I don’t know what she is,” (Miss Darley laid her 
hand, trembling, on the young master’s sleeve), “ but I can 
tell when she is in the room without seeing or hearing her. 
Oh, Mr. Langdon, I am weak and nervous, and no doubt 
foolish, — but — if there were women now, as in the days of 
our Saviour, possessed of devils, I should think there was 
something not human looking out of Elsie Vernier’s eyes!” 

The poor girl’s breast rose and fell tumultuously as she 
spoke, and her voice labored, as if some obstruction were ris- 
ing in her throat. 

A scene might possibly have come of it, but the door was 
opened. Mr. Silas Peckham. Miss Darley got away as soon 
as she well could. 

“ Why did not Miss Darley go to the party last evening ? ” 
said Mr. Bernard. 

“ Well, the fact is,” answered Mr. Silas Peckham, “ Miss 
Darley, she’s pooty much took up with the school. She’s an 
industris young woman, — yis, she is industris, — but perhaps 
she a’n’t quite so spry a worker as some. Maybe, considerin’ 
she’s paid for her time, she isn’t fur out o’ the way in occoo- 
pyin’ herself evenin’s, — that is, if so be she a’n’t smart 
•enough to finish up all her work in the daytime. Edoocation 
is the great business of the Institoot. Amoosements are ob- 
jec’s of a secondary natur’, accordin’ to my v’oo.” (The un- 
spellable pronounciation of this word is the touchstone of 
.Hew England Brahminism.) 

Mr. Bernard drew a deep breath, his thin nostrils dilating, 
as if the air did not rush in fast enough to cool his blood, 
while Silas Peckham was speaking. The head of the Apol- 
linean Institute delivered himself of these judicious senti- 
ments in that peculiar acid, penetrating tone, thickened 
with a nasal twang, which not rarely becomes hereditary 
after three or four generations raised upon east winds, salt 
fish, and large, white-bellied, pickled cucumbers. He spoke 
deliberately, as if weighing his words well, so that, during 
his few remarks, Mr. Bernard had time for a mental ac- 
companiment with variations, accented by certain bodily 
changes, which escaped Mr. Peckham’s observation. First 
there was a feeling of disgust and shame at hearing Helen 
Darley spoken of like a dumb working animal. That sent 


THE MORNING AFTER. 


95 


the blood up into his cheeks. Then the slur upon her prob- 
able want of force — her incapability who made the character 
of the school and left this man to pocket its profits — sent 
a thrill of the old Wentworth fire through him, so that his 
muscles hardened, his hands closed, and he took the measure 
of Mr. Silas Peckham, to see if his head would strike the 
wall in case he went over backwards all of a sudden. This 
would not do, of course, and so the thrill passed off and the 
muscles softened again. Then came that state of tenderness 
in the heart, overlying wrath in the stomach, in which the 
eyes grow moist like a woman’s, and there is also a great 
boiling up of objectionable terms out of the deep-water 
vocabulary, so that Prudence and Propriety, and all the 
other pious “ Ps ” have to jump upon the lid of speech to 
keep them from boiling over into fierce articulation. All 
this was internal, chiefly, and of course not recognized by 
Mr. Silas Peckham. The idea that any full-grown, sensible 
man should have any other notion than that of getting the 
most work for the least money out of his assistants, had 
never suggested itself to him. 

Mr. Bernard had gone through this paroxysm, and cooled 
down, in the period while Mr. Peckham was uttering these 
words in his thin, shallow whine, twanging up into the frontal 
sinuses. What was the use of losing his temper and throw- 
ing away his place and so, among the consequences which 
would necessarily follow, leaving the poor lady-teacher with- 
out a friend to stand by her, ready to lay his hand on the 
grand inquisitor before the windlass of his rack had taken 
one turn too many. 

“ No doubt, Mr. Peckham,” he said in a grave, calm voice, 
<l there is a great deal of work to be done in the school ; but 
perhaps we can distribute the duties a little more evenly 
after a time. I shall look over the girls’ themes myself, after 
this week. Perhaps there will be some other parts of her 
labor that I can take on myself. We can arrange a new 
programme of studies and recitations.” 

“ We can do that,” said Mr. Silas Peckham. “ But I 
don’t propose mater’lly alterin’ Miss Darley’s dooties. I 
don’t think she works to hurt herself. Some of the Trustees 
have proposed interdoosin’ new branches of study, and I 
^expect you will be pooty much occoopied with the dooties 
that belong to your place. On the Sahbath you will be able 


96 


ELSIE VENNER. 


to attend divine service three times, which is expected of our 
teachers. I shall continoo myself to give Sahbath Scriptur’- 
readin’s to the young ladies. That is a solemn dooty I can’t 
make up my mind to commit to other people. My teachers, 
enjoy the Lord’s day as a day of rest. In it they do no 
manner of work, — except in cases of necessity or mercy, 
such as fillin’ out diplomas, or when we git crowded jest at 
the end of a term, or when there is an extry number of 
p’oopils, or other Providential call to dispense with the 
ordinance.” 

Mr. Bernard had a fine glow in his cheeks by this time, — 
doubtless kindled by the thought of the kind consideration 
Mr. Peckham showed for his subordinates in allowing them 
the between-meeting time on Sundays, except for some spe- 
cial reason. But the morning was wearing away; so he- 
went to the schoolroom, taking leave very properly of his 
respected principal, who soon took his hat and departed. 

Mr. Peckham visited certain “ stores ” or shops, where he 
made inquiries after various articles in the provision line, 
and effected a purchase or two. Two or three barrels of 
potatoes, which had sprouted in a promising way, 'he secured 
at a bargain. A side of feminine beef was also obtained 
at a low figure. He was entirely satisfied with a couple of 
barrels of flour, which, being invoiced “ slightly damaged,”’ 
were to be had at a reasonable price. 

'After this, Silas Peckham fel’t in good spirits. He had 
done a pretty stroke of business. It came into his head 
whether he might not follow it up with a still more brilliant 
speculation. So he turned his steps in the direction of Colo- 
nel Sprowle’s. 

It was eleven o’clock, and the battlefield of last even- 
ing was as we left it. Mr. Peckham’s visit was unexpected, 
perhaps not very well timed, but the Colonel received him 
civilly. 

“ Beautifully lighted — these rooms last night ! ” said Mr., 
Peckham. “ Winter-strained ? ” 

The Colonel nodded. 

“ How much do you pay for your winter-strained ? ” 

The Colonel told him the price. 

“ Very hahnsome supper, — very hahnsome. Nothin’ ever 
seen like it in Rockland. Must have been a great heap of 
things left over.” 


THE MORNING AFTER. 


97 

The compliment was not ungrateful, and the Colonel 
acknowledged it by smiling and saying, “ I should think the* 
was a trifle ! Come and look.” 

When Silas Peckham saw how many delicacies had sur- 
vived the evening’s conflict, his commercial spirit rose at 
once to the point of a proposal. 

“ Colonel Sprowle,” said he, “ there’s meat and cakes and 
pies and pickles enough on that table to spread a hahnsome 
eolation. If you’d like to trade reasonable, I think perhaps 
I should be willin’ to take ’em off your hands. There’s been 
a talk about our havin’ a celebration in the Parnassian Grove, 
and I think I could work in what your folks don’t want and 
make myself whole by chargin’ a small sum for tickets. 
Broken meats, of course, a’n’t of the same valoo as fresh 
provisions; so I think you might ^be willin’ to trade reason- 
able.” 

Mr. Peckham paused and rested on his proposal. It would 
not, perhaps, have been very extraordinary, if Colonel 
•Sprowle had entertained the proposition. There is no telling 
beforehand how such things will strike people. It didn’t 
happen to strike the Colonel favorably. He had a little red- 
blooded manhood in him. 

“ Sell you them things to make a eolation out of ? ” the 
"Colonel replied. “Walk, up to the table, Mr. Peckham, 
and help yourself! Fill your pockets, Mr. Peckham! Fetch 
a basket, and our hired folks shall fill it full for ye ! Send a 
cart, if y’ like, ’n’ carry off them leavin’s to make a celebra- 
tion for your pupils with! Only let me tell ye this: — as 
sure’s my name’s Plezekiah Spraowle, you’ll be known 
through the taown, ’n’ through the caounty from that day 
forrard, as the Principal of the Broken- Victuals Institoot ! ” 

Even provincial human nature sometimes has a touch of 
sublimity about it. Mr. Silas Peckham had gone a little 
deeper than he meant, and come upon the “ hard-pan,” as 
the well-diggers call it, of the Colonel’s character, before he 
thought of it. A militia colonel, standing on his senti- 
ments, is not to be despised. That was shown pretty well in 
Hew England two or three generations ago. There were a 
good many plain officers that talked about their rigiment 
and their “ caounty ” who knew very well how to say 1 Make 
veady!” “Take aim!” “Fire!”— in the face of a line of 
grenadiers with bullets in their guns and bayonets on them. 


98 


ELSIE VENNEK. 


And though a rustic uniform is not always unexceptionable 
in its cut and trimmings, yet there was many an ill-made 
coat in those old times that was good enough to be shown to 
the enemy’s front rank, too often to be left on the field with 
a round hole in its left lapel that matched another going: 
right through the brave heart of the plain country captain or 
major or colonel who was buried in it under the crimson 
turf. 

Mr. Silas Peckham said little or nothing. His sensibilities* 
were not acute, but he perceived that he had made a mis- 
calculation. He hoped that there was no offense, — thought 
it might have been mutooally agreeable, conclooded he would 
give up the idee of a eolation, and backed himself out as if 
unwilling to expose the less guarded aspect of his person tO' 
the risk of accelerating impulses. 

The Colonel shut the door, — cast his eye on the toe of his 
right boot, as if it had had strong temptation, — looked at 
his watch, then round the room, and, going to a cupboard, 
swallowed a glass of deep-red brandy and water to compose 
his feelings. 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE DOCTOR ORDERS THE BEST SULKY. 

( With a Digression on “ Hired Help/ f ) 

u Abel ! Slip Cassia into the new sulky, and fetch her 
round.” 

Abel was Dr. Kittredge’s hired man. He was born in New 
Hampshire, a queer sort of State, with fat streaks of soil 
-and population where they breed giants in mind and body, 
nnd lean streaks which export imperfectly-nourished young 
men with promising but neglected appetites, who may be 
found in great numbers in all the large towns, or could be 
until of late years, when they have been half driven out of 
their favorite basement-stories by foreigners, and half- 
coaxed away from them by California. New Hampshire is 
in more than one sense the Switzerland of New England. 
The “ Granite State ” being naturally enough deficient in 
pudding-stone, its children are apt to wander southward in 
search of that deposit, — in the unpetrified condition. 

Abel Stebbins was a good specimen of that extraordinary 
hybrid or mule between democracy and chrysocracy, a na- 
tive-born New England serving man. The Old World has 
nothing at all like him. He is at once an emperor and a sub- 
ordinate. In one hand he holds one five-millionth part (be 
the same more or less) of the power that sways the destinies 
of the Great Republic. His other hand is in your boot, 
which he is about to polish. It is impossible to turn a fel- 
low-citizen whose vote may make his master — say, rather, 
employer — Governor or President, or who may be one or both 
himself, into a flunkey. That article must be imported 
ready-made from other centers of civilization. When a New 
Englander has lost his self-respect as a citizen and as a man, 
he is demoralized, and cannot be trusted with the money to 
pay for a dinner. 

It may be supposed, therefore, that this fractional em- 
peror, this continent-shaper, finds his position awkward when 


100 


ELSIE VENNER. 


he goes into service, and that his employer is apt to find it 
still more embarrassing. It is always under protest that the 
hired man does his duty. Every act of service is subject to 
the drawback, “I am as good as you are.” This is so com- 
mon, at least, as almost to be the rule, and partly accounts 
for the rapid disappearance of the indigenous “ domestic ” 
from the basements above mentioned. Paleontologists will 
by-and-by be examining the floors of our kitchens for tracks- 
of the extinct native species of serving man. The female 
of the same race is fast dying out ; indeed, the time is not far 
distant when all the varieties of young woman will have 
vanished from New England, as the dodo has perished in the 
Mauritius. The young lady is all that we shall have left,, 
and the mop and duster of the last Almira or Loi’zy will be 
stared at by generations of Bridgets and Noras as that fa- 
mous head and foot of the lost bird are stared at in the 
Ashmolean Museum. 

Abel Stebbins, the Doctor’s man, took the true American, 
view of his difficult position. He sold his time to the Doc- 
tor, and, having sold it, he took care to fulfill his half of the 
bargain. The Doctor, on his part, treated him, not like a 
gentleman, because one does not order a gentleman to bring^ 
up his horse or run his errands, but he treated him like a 
man. Every order was given in courteous terms. His rea- 
sonable privileges were respected as much as if they had 
been guaranteed under hand and seal. The Doctor lent him 
books from his own library, and gave him all friendly coun- 
sel, as if he were a son or a younger brother. 

Abel had Revolutionary blood in his veins, and though he 
saw fit to “hire out,” he could never stand the word “ serv-~ 
ant,” or consider himself the inferior one of the two high 
contracting parties. When he came to live with the Doctor,, 
he made up his mind he would dismiss the old gentle- 
man, if he did not behave according to his notions of pro- 
priety. But he soon found that the Doctor was one of the 
right sort, and so determined to keep him. The Doctor soon 
found, on his side, that he had a trustworthy, intelligent 
fellow, who would be invaluable to him, if he only let him 
have his own way of doing what was to be done. 

The Doctor’s hired man had not the manners of a French 
valet. He was grave and taciturn for the most part, he- 
never bowed and rarely smiled, but was always at work in 


THE DOCTOR ORDERS THE BEST SULKY. 101 

the daytime and always reading in the evening. He was 
Jiostler, and did all the housework that a man could prop- 
erly do, would go to the door or “ tend table,” bought the 
provisions for the family, — in short, did almost everything 
for them but get their clothing. There was no office in a 
perfectly appointed household, from that of steward down 
to that of stable-boy, which he did not cheerfully assume. 
His round of work not consuming all his energies, he must 
needs cultivate the Doctor’s garden, which he kept in one 
perpetual bloom, from the blowing of the first crocus to the 
fading of the last dahlia. 

This garden was Abel’s poem. Its half-dozen beds were so 
many cantos. Nature crowded them for him with imagery 
such as no Laureate could copy in the cold mosaic of language. 
The rhythm of alternating dawn and sunset, the strophe 
and antistrophe still perceptible through all the sudden shifts 
of our dithyrambic seasons and echoed in corresponding 
floral harmonies, made melody in the soul of Abel, the plain 
serving-man. It softened his whole otherwise rigid aspect. 
He worshiped God according to the strict way of his fa- 
thers; but a florist’s Puritanism is always colored by the 
petals of his flowers, — and Nature never shows him a black 
corolla. 

He may or may not figure again in this narrative ; but as 
there must be some who confound the New-England hired 
man, native-born, with the servant of foreign birth, and as 
there is the difference of two continents and two civiliza- 
tions between them, it did not seem fair to let Abel bring 
round the Doctor’s mare and sulky without touching his 
features in half -shadow into our background. 

The Doctor’s mare, Cassia, was so called by her master 
from her cinnamon color, cassia being one of the professional 
names for that spice or drug. She was of the shade we call 
sorrel, or, as an Englishman would perhaps say, chestnut, — 
a genuine “ Morgan ” mare, with a low forehand, as is com- 
mon in this breed, but with strong quarters and flat hocks, 
well ribbed up, with a good eye and a pair of lively ears, — a 
first-rate docior’s beast, — would stand until her harness 
dropped off her back at the door of a tedious case, and trot 
over hill and dale thirty miles in three hours, if there was a 
child in the next county with a bean in its windpipe and the 
.Doctor gave her a hint of the fact. Cassia was not large, 


102 


ELSIE VENNER. 


but she had a good deal of action, and was the Doctor’s 
show-horse. There were two other animals in his stable: 
Quassia or Quashy, the black horse, and Caustic, the old 
bay, with whom he jogged round the village. 

“ A long ride to-day ? ” said Abel, as he brought up the 
equipage. 

“ Just out of the village, — that’s all. — There’s a kink in 
her mane, — pull it out, will you ? ” 

“ Goin’ to visit some of the great folks,” Abel said to- 
himself. “ Wonder who it is.” — Then to the Doctor, — “ Any- 
body get sick at Sprowles’s ? They say Deacon Soper had a 
fit, after eatin’ some o’ their frozen victuals.” 

The Doctor smiled. He guessed the Deacon would do 
well enough. He was only going to ride over to the Dudley 
mansion-house. 


CHAPTER X. 


THE DOCTOR CALLS ON ELSIE VENNER. 

If that primitive physician, Chiron, M. D., appears as a t 
Centaur, as we look at him through the lapse of thirty cen- 
turies, the modern country-doctor, if he could be seen about 
thirty miles off, could not be distinguished from a wheel- 
animalcule. He inhabits a wheel-carriage. He thinks of 
stationary dwellings as Long Tom Coffin did of land irt 
general ; a house may be well enough for incidental purposes,, 
but for a “ stiddy ” residence give him a “ kerridge.” If he 
is classified in the Linnsean scale, he must be set down thus r 
Genus Homo ; Species Rotifer infusorius, — the wheel-animal 
of infusions. 

The Dudley mansion was not a mile from the Doctor’s;, 
but it never occurred to him to think of walking to see any 
of his patients’ families, if he had any professional object 
in his visit. Whenever the narrow sulky turned in at a 
gate, the rustic who was digging potatoes, or hoeing com, or 
swishing through the grass with his scythe, in wave-like: 
crescents, or stepping short behind a loaded wheelbarrow, or 
trudging lazily by the side of the swinging, loose-throated,, 
short-legged oxen, rocking along the road as if they had just 
been landed after a three-months’ voyage, — the toiling na- 
tive, whatever he was doing, stopped and looked up at the 
house the Doctor was visiting. 

u Somebody sick over there t’ Haynes’s. Guess th’ old. 
man’s ailin’ ag’in. Winder’s haaf-way open in the chamber, 
shouldn’ wonder ’f he was dead and laid aout. Docterin’ 
a’n’t no use, when y’ see th’ winders open like that. Wahl, 
money a’n’t much to speak of to th’ old man naow ! He don’ 
want but tew cents, — ’n’ old Widah Peake, she knows what 
he wants them for ! ” 

Or again, — 

“ Measles raound pooty thick. Briggs’s folks buried two 
children with ’em laas’ week. Th’ ol’ Doctor, he’d h’ kePd 


103 


104 


ELSIE VENNER. 


J em threugh. Struck in V p’dooced mo’t’f’cation, — so they 
say.” 

This is only meant as a sample of the kind of way they 
used to think or talk, when the narrow sulky turned in at 
the gate of some house where there was a visit to be made. 

Oh, that narrow sulky! What hopes, what fears, what 
comfort, what anguish, what despair, in the roll of its com- 
ing or its parting wheels! In the spring, when the old 
people get the coughs which give them a few shakes and 
their lives drop in pieces like the ashes of a burned thread 
which have kept the threadlike shape until they were stirred, 
in the hot summer noons, when the strong man comes in 
from the fields, like the son of the Shunamite, crying, “ My 
head, my head,” — in the dying autumn days, when youth and 
maiden lie fever-stricken in many a household, still-faced, 
dull-eyed, dark-flushed, dry-lipped, low-muttering in their 
daylight dreams, their fingers moving singly like those of 
slumbering harpers, — in the dead winter, when the white 
plague of the North has caged its wasted victims, shudder- 
ing as they think of the frozen soil which must be quarried 
like rock to receive them, if their perpetual convalescence 
should happen to be interfered with by any untoward ac- 
cident, — at every season, the narrow sulky rolled round 
freighted with unmeasured burdens of joy and woe. 

The Doctor drove along the southern foot of The Moun- 
tain. The “ Dudley Mansion ” was near the eastern edge of 
this declivity, where it rose steepest, with baldest cliffs and 
densest patches of overhanging wood. It seemed almost too 
steep to climb, but a practiced eye could see from a distance 
the zigzag lines of the sheep-paths which scaled it like min- 
iature Alpine roads. A few hundred feet up The Moun- 
tain’s side was a dark deep dell, unwooded, save for a few 
spindling, crazy-looking hackmatacks or native larches, with 
pallid green tufts sticking out fantastically all over them. It 
shelved so deeply, that, while the hemlock-tassels were swing- 
ing on the trees around its border, all would be still at its 
springy bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would wave 
slowly backward and forward like a saber with a twist as 
of a feathered oar, — and this when not a breath could be 
felt, and every other stem and blade were motionless. There 
was an old story of one having perished here in the winter 
of ’86, and his body having been found in the spring, — 


THE DOCTOR CALLS ON ELSIE VENNER. 105 = 

whence its common name of “ Dead-Man’s Hollow.” Higher* 
up there were huge cliffs with chasms, and, it was thought,, 
concealed caves, where in old times they said that Tories lay 
hid, some hinted not without occasional aid and comfort 
from the Dudleys then living in the mansion-house. Still 
higher and farther west lay the accursed ledge, — shunned 
by all, unless it were now and then a daring youth, or a 
wandering naturalist who ventured to its edge in the hope 
of securing some infantile Crotalus durissus, who had not 
yet cut his poison-teeth. 

Long, long ago, in old Colonial times, the Honorable 
Thomas Dudley, Esquire, a man of note and name and great 
resources, allied by descent to the family of “ Tom Dudley,” 
as the early Governor is sometimes irreverently called by 
our most venerable, but still youthful antiquary, — and to the 
other public Dudleys, of course, — of all of whom he made 
small account, as being himself an English gentleman, with 
little taste for the splendors of provincial office, — early in 
the last century, Thomas Dudley had built this mansion. 
For several generations it had been dwelt in by descend- 
ants of the same name, but soon after the Revolution it 
passed by marriage into the hands of the Venners, by whom 
it had ever since been held and tenanted. 

As the Doctor turned an angle in the road, all at once* 
the stately old house rose before him. It was a skillfully 
managed effect, as it well might be, for it was no vulgar 
English architect who had planned the mansion and ar-' 
ranged its position and approach. The old house rose be- 
fore the Doctor, crowning a terraced garden, flanked at the 
left by an avenue of tall elms. The flower-beds were edged 
with box, which diffused around it that dreamy balsamic 
odor, full of ante-natal reminiscences of a lost Paradise,, 
dimly fragrant as might be the bdellium of ancient Havi- 
lah, the land compassed by the river Pison that went out 
of Eden. The garden was somewhat neglected, but not in 
disgrace, — and in the time of tulips and hyacinths, of roses*, 
of “ snowballs,” of honeysuckles, of lilacs, of syringas, it was 
rich with blossoms. 

From the front-windows of the mansion the eye reached a 
far blue mountain-summit, — no rounded heap, such as oftem 
shuts in a village-landscape, but a sharp peak, clean-angled 
as Ascutney from the Dartmouth green. A wide gap* 


106 


ELSIE VENNER. 


through miles of woods had opened this distant view, and 
■showed more, perhaps, than all the labors of the architect 
-and the landscape-gardener the larger style of the early 
Dudleys. * 

The great stone-chimney of the mansion-house was the 
center from which all the artificial features of the scene ap- 
peared to flow. The roofs, the gables, the dormer-windows, 
the porches, the clustered offices in the rear, all seemed to 
crowd about the great chimney. To this central pillar the 
paths all converged. The single poplar behind the house, — 
^Nature is jealous of proud chimneys, and always loves to 
put a poplar near one, so that it may fling a leaf or two down 
its black throat every autumn, — the one tall poplar behind 
the house seemed to nod and whisper to the grave square 
column, the elms to sway their branches towards it. And 
when the blue smoke rose from its summit, it seemed to be 
wafted away to join the azure haze which hung around the 
peak in the far distance, so that both should bathe in a 
•common atmosphere. 

Behind the house were clumps of lilacs with a century’s 
growth upon them, and looking more like trees than like 
•shrubs. Shaded by a group of these was the ancient well, 
of huge circuit, and with a low arch opening out of its wall 
:about ten feet below the surface, — ’whether the door of a 
crypt for the concealment of treasure, or of a subterranean 
passage, or merely of a vault for keeping provisions cool in 
hot weather, opinions differed. 

On looking at the house, it was plain that it was built 
with Old-World notions of strength and durability, and, so 
far as might be, with Old-World materials. The hinges of 
the doors stretched out like arms, instead of like hands, as 
we make them. The bolts were massive enough for a donjon- 
keep. The small window-ganes were actually inclosed in the 
wood of the sashes, instead of being stuck to them with 
putty, as in our modern windows. The broad staircase was 
-of easy ascent, and was guarded by quaintly turned and 
twisted balusters. The ceilings of the two rooms of state 
were molded with medallion-portraits and rustic figures, 
isuch as may have been seen by many readers in the famous 
old Philipse house, — Washington’s headquarters, — in the 
itown of Yonkers. The fire-places, worthy of the wide-throated 
central chimney, were bordered by pictured tiles, some of 


THE DOCTOR CALLS ON ELSIE YENNER. 107 " 


them with Scripture stories, some with Watteau-like figures,. 
— tall damsels in slim waists and with spread enough of 
skirt for a modern ballroom, with bowing, reclining, or mu- 
sical swains of what everybody calls the “ conventional ” 
sort, — that is, the swain adapted to genteel society rather 
than to a literal sheep-compelling existence. 

The house was furnished, soon after it was completed,, 
with many heavy articles made in London from a rare wood, 
just then come into fashion, not so rare now, and commonly 
known as mahogany. Time had turned it very dark, and the- 
stately bedsteads and tall cabinets and claw-footed chairs, 
and tables were in keeping with the sober dignity of the 
ancient mansion. The old “ hangings ” were yet preserved in. 
the chambers, faded, but still showing their rich patterns, — 
properly entitled to their name, for they were literally hung 
upon flat wooden frames like trellis-work, which again were* 
secured to the naked partitions. 

There were portraits of different date on the walls of the- 
various apartments, old painted coats-of-arms, bevel-edged 
mirrors, and in one sleeping-room a glass case of wax-work 
flowers and spangly symbols, with a legend signifying that 
E. M. (supposed to be Elizabeth Mascarene) wished not to* 
be “ forgot ” 

“ When I am dead and laid in dust 
And all my bones are ” 

Poor E. M. ! Poor everybody that sighs for earthly remem- 
brance in a planet with a core of fire and a crust of fossils l 

Such was the Dudley mansion-house, for it kept its ancient 
name in spite of the change in the line of descent. Its’ 
spacious apartments looked dreary and desolate; for here 
Dudley Venner and his daughter dwelt by themselves, with 
such servants only as their quiet mode of life required. He 
almost lived in his library, the western room on the ground- 
floor. Its windows looked upon a small plat of green, in 
the midst of which was a single grave marked by a plain 
marble slab. Except this room, and the chamber where he 
slept, and the servants’ wing, the rest of the house was all 
Elsie’s. She was always a restless, wandering child from her 
early years, and would have her little bed moved from one* 
chamber to another, — flitting around as the fancy took her.. 
Sometimes she would drag a mat and a pillow into one o£ 


108 


ELSIE VENNER. 


the great empty rooms, and, wrapping herself in a shawl, 
*coil up and go to sleep in a corner. Nothing frightened her; 
the “ haunted ” chamber, with the torn hangings that flapped 
like wings when there was air stirring, was one of her fav; 
orite retreats. 

She had been a very hard creature to manage. Her father 
could influence, but not govern her. Old Sophy, born of a 
slave mother in the house, could do more with her than any- 
body, knowing her by long instinctive study. The other ser- 
vants were afraid of her. Her father had sent for gov- 
ernesses, but none of them ever stayed long. She made them 
nervous; one of them had a strange fit of sickness; not one 
■of them ever came back to the house to see her. A young 
Spanish woman who taught her dancing succeeded best with 
her, for she had a passion for that exercise, and had mastered 
some of the most difficult dances. 

Long before this period, she had manifested some most 
extraordinary singularities of taste or instinct. The ex- 
treme sensitiveness of her father on this point prevented 
any allusion to them ; but there were stories floating around, 
some of them even getting into the papers, — without her 
name, of course, — which were of a kind to excite intense cu- 
riosity, if not more anxious feelings. This thing was certain, 
that at the age of twelve she was missed one night, and was 
found sleeping in the open air under a tree, like a wild crea- 
ture. Very often she would wander off by day, always with- 
out a companion, bringing home with her a nest, a flower, or 
even a more questionable trophy of her ramble, such as 
showed that there was no place where she was afraid to 
venture. Once in a while she had stayed out over night, in 
which case the alarm was spread, and men went in search 
of her, but never successfully, — so that some said she hid 
herself in trees, and others that she had found one of the 
•old Tory caves. 

Some, of course, said she was a crazy girl, and ought to be 
sent to an Asylum. But old Doctor Kittredge had shaken 
his head, and told them to bear with her, and let her have 
her way as much as they could, but watch her, as far as 
possible, without making her suspicious of them. He visited 
her now and then, under the pretext of seeing her father on 
business, or of only making a friendly call. 

The Doctor fastened his horse outside the gate, and walked 


THE DOCTOR CALLS ON ELSIE VENNER. 109 * 


up the garden- alley. He stopped suddenly with a start. A 
strange sound had jarred upon his ear. It was a sharp pro- 
longed rattle, continuous, but rising and falling as if in 
rhythmical cadence. He moved softly towards the open win- 
dow from which the sound seemed to proceed. 

Elsie was alone in the room, dancing one of those wild 
Moorish fandangoes, such as a matador hot from the Plaza 
de Toros of Seville or Madrid might love to lie and gaze at. 
She was a figure to look upon in silence. The dancing frenzy 
must have seized upon her while she was dressing; for she- 
was in her bodice, bare-armed, her hair floating unbound far 
below the waist of her barred or banded skirt. She had 
caught up her castanets, and rattled them as she danced 
with a kind of passionate fierceness, her lithe body undulat- 
ing with flexuous grace, her diamond eyes glittering, her 
round arms wreathing and unwinding, alive and vibrant to 
the tips of her slender fingers. Some passion seemed to ex- 
haust itself in this dancing paroxysm; for all at once she- 
reeled from the middle of the floor, and flung herself, as it 
were in a careless coil, upon a great tiger’s-skin which was 
spread out in one corner of the apartment. 

The old Doctor stood motionless, looking at her as she lay 
panting on the tawny, black-lined robe of the dead monster, 
which stretched out beneath her, its rude flattened outline 
recalling the Terror of the Jungle as he crouched for his 
fatal spring. In a few moments her head drooped upon her' 
arm, and her glittering eyes closed, — she was sleeping. He 
stood looking at her still, steadily, thoughtfully, tenderly. 
Presently he lifted his hand to his forehead, as if recalling' 
some fading remembrance of other years. 

“ Poor Catalina ! ” 

This was all he said. He shook his head, — implying that 
his visit would be in vain to-day, — returned to his sulky, and! 
rode away, as if in a dream. 


CHAPTER XI. 


cousin Richard's visit. 

The Doctor was roused from his reverie by the clatter of 
approaching hoofs. He looked forward and saw a young fel- 
low galloping rapidly towards him. 

A common New England rider with his toes turned out, 
his elbows jerking and the daylight showing under him at 
every step, bestriding a cantering beast of the plebeian breed, 
thick at every point where he should be thin, and thin at 
every point where he should be thick, is not one of those 
noble objects that bewitch the world. The best horsemen 
outside of the cities are the unshod country-boys, who ride 
bare-back,” with only a halter round the horse’s neck, dig- 
ging their brown heels into his ribs, and slanting over back- 
wards, but sticking on like leeches, and taking the hardest 
trot as if they loved it. This was a different sight on which 
the Doctor was looking. The streaming mane and tail of 
the unshorn, savage-looking, black horse, the dashing grace 
with which the young fellow in the shadowy sombrero, and 
•armed with the huge spurs, sat in his high-peaked saddle, 
could belong only to the mustang of the Pampas and his 
master. This bold rider was a young man whose sudden 
apparition in the quiet inland town had reminded some of 
the good people of a bright, curly-haired boy they had known 
•some eight or ten years before as little Dick Venner. 

This boy had passed several of his early years at the 
Dudley mansion, the playmate of Elsie, being her cousin, 
two or three years older than herself, the son of Captain 
Ttichard Venner, a South American trader, who, as he 
changed his residence often, was glad to leave the boy in 
his brother’s charge. The Captain’s wife, this boy’s mother, 
was a lady of Buenos Ayres, of Spanish descent, and had died 
while the child was in his cradle. These two motherless 
children were as strange a pair as one roof could well cover. 
Both handsome, wild, impetuous, unmanageable, they played 


no 


COUSIN richakd’s visit. 


Ill 


and fought together like two young leopards, beautiful, but 
dangerous, their lawless instincts showing through all their 
graceful movements. 

The boy was little else than a young Gaucho when he first 
came to Rockland; for he had learned to ride almost as soon 
as to walk, and could jump on his pony and trip up a run- 
away pig with the bolas or noose him with his miniature 
lasso at an age when some city children would hardly be 
trusted out of sight of a nursery-maid. It makes men im- 
perious to sit a horse; no man governs his fellows so well 
.as from this living throne. And, so, from Marcus Aurelius 
in Roman bronze, down to the “ man on horseback ” in Gen- 
eral Cushing’s prophetic speech, the saddle has always been 
the true seat of empire. The absolute tyranny of a human 
will over a noble and powerful beast develops the instinct 
of personal 1 prevalence and dominion ; so that horse-subduer 
/and hero were almost synonymous in simpler times, and are 
closely related still. An ancestry of wild riders naturally 
•enough bequeaths also those other tendencies which we see 
in the Tartars, the Cossacks, and our own Indian Cen- 
taurs, — and as well, perhaps, in the old-fashioned fox-hunt- 
ing squire as in any of these. Sharp alternations of violent 
action and self-indulgent repose, a hard run, and a long 
revel after it ; that is what overmuch horse tends to animalize 
n man into. Such antecedents may have helped to make lit- 
tle Dick Yenner a self-willed, capricious boy, and a rough 
playmate for Elsie. 

Elsie was the wilder of the two. Old Sophy, who used to 
watch them with those quick, animal-looking eyes of hers, — 
she was said to be the granddaughter of a cannibal chief, 
and inherited the keen senses belonging to all creatures 
which are hunted as game, — Old Spphy, who watched them 
in their play and their quarrels, always seemed to be more 
afraid for the boy than the girl. 11 Massa Dick! Massa Dick! 
don’ you be too rough wi’ dat gal ! Scratch you las’ week, ’n’ 
some" day she bite you; ’n’ if she bite you, Massa Dick!” 
Old Sophy nodded her head ominously, as if she could say a 
great deal more; while, in grateful acknowledgment of her 
caution, Master Dick put his two little fingers in the angles 
-of his mouth, and his forefingers on his lower eyelids, draw- 
ing upon these features until his expression reminded her of 
.something she vaguely recollected in her infancy,: the face 


112 


ELSIE VENNER. 


of a favorite deity executed in wood by an African artist for 
her grandfather, brought over by her mother, and burned 
when she became a Christian. 

These two wild children had much in common. They loved' 
to ramble together, to build huts, to climb trees for nests, to 
ride the colts, to dance, to race, and to play at boys’ rude- 
games as if both were boys. But wherever two natures have 
a great deal in common, the conditions of a first-rate quar- 
rel are furnished ready-made. Relations are very apt to 
hate each other, just because they are too much alike. It is* 
so frightful to be in an atmosphere of family idiosyncrasies; 
to see all the hereditary uncomeliness or infirmity of body,, 
all the defects of speech, all the failings of temper, intensi- 
fied by concentration, so that every fault of our own finds 
itself multiplied by reflections, like our images in a saloon 
lined with mirrors! Nature knows what she is about. The 
centrifugal principle which grows out of the antipathy of’ 
like to like is only the repetition in character of the arrange- 
ment we see expressed materially in certain seed capsules,, 
which burst and throw the seed to all points of the compass- 
A house is a large pod, with a human germ or two in each 
of its cells or chambers; it opens by dehiscence of the front 
door by-and-by, and projects one of its germs to Kansas,, 
another to San Francisco, another to Chicago, and so on; 
and this that Smith may not be Smithed to death and Brown 
may not be Browned into a madhouse, but mix with the* 
world again and struggle back to average humanity. 

Elsie’s father, whose fault was to indulge her in every- 
thing, found that it would never do to let these children 
grow up together. They would either love each other as 
they got older, and pair like wild creatures, or take some 
fierce antipathy, which might end nobody could tell where* 
It was not safe to try. The boy must be sent away. A 
sharper quarrel than common decided this point. Master 
Dick forgot Old Sophy’s caution, and vexed the girl into a 
paroxysm of wrath, in which she sprang at him and bit his; 
arm. Perhaps they made too much of it, for they sent for 
the old Doctor, who came at once when he heard what had 
happened. He had a good deal to say about the danger 
there was from the teeth of animals or human beings when 
enraged; and as he emphasized his remarks by the applica- 
tion of a pencil of lunar caustic to each of the marks left by 


cousin kichakd’s visit. 113 

the sharp white teeth, they were like to be remembered by 
•at least one of his hearers. 

So Master Dick went off on his travels, which led him into 
strange places and stranger company. Elsie was half pleased 
and half sorry to have him go; the children had a kind of 
mingled liking and hate for each other, just such as is very 
oommon among relations. Whether the girl had most satisfac- 
tion in the plays they shared, or in teasing him, or taking 
her small revenge upon him for teasing her, it would have 
been hard to say. At any rate she was lonely without him. 
She had more fondness for the old black woman than any- 
body; but Sophy could not follow her far beyond her own 
old rocking chair. As for her father, she had made him afraid 
of her, not for his sake, but for her own. Sometimes she would 
seem to be fond of him, and the parent’s heart would yearn 
within him as she twined her supple arms about him; and 
then some look she gave him, some half-articulated expres- 
sion, would turn his cheek pale and almost make him shiver, 
and he would say kindly, “Now go, Elsie, dear,” and smile 
upon her as she went and close and lock the door softly after 
her. Then his forehead would knot and furrow itself, and 
the drops of anguish stand thick upon it. He would go to 
the western window of his study and look at the solitary 
mound with the marble slab for its headstone. After his 
grief had had its way, he would kneel down and pray for his 
child as one who has no hope save in that special grace which 
can bring the most rebellious spirit into sweet subjection. 
All this might seem like weakness in a parent having the 
charge of one sole daughter of his house and heart; but he 
had tried authority and tenderness by turns so long with- 
out any good effect, that he had become sore perplexed, and, 
surrounding her with cautious watchfulness as he best might, 
left her in the main to her own guidance and the merciful in- 
fluences which Heaven might send down to direct her foot- 
steps. 

Meantime the boy grew up to youth and early manhood 
through a strange succession of adventures. He had been 
at school at Buenos Ayres, — had quarreled with his mother’s 
relatives, — had run off to the Pampas, and lived with the 
Gauchos, — had made friends with the Indians, and ridden 
with them, it was rumored, in some of their savage forays, — 
Bad returned and made up his quarrel —had got money by 


114 


ELSIE VENNER. 


inheritance or otherwise, — had troubled the peace of certain.1 
magistrates, — had found it convenient to leave the City of 
Wholesome Breezes, for a time, and had galloped off on a 
fast horse of his (so it is said), with some officers riding 
after him, who took good care (but this was only the popular 
story) not to catch him. A few days after this he was 
taking his ice on the Alameda of Mendoza, and a week 
or two later sailed from Valparaiso for New York, carrying 
with him the horse with which he had scampered over the 
Plains, a 'trunk or two with his newely purchased outfit of* 
clothing and other conveniences, and a belt heavy with gold 
and with a few Brazilian diamonds sewed in it, enough in 
value to serve him for a long journey. 

Dick Venner had seen life enough to wear out the earlier- 
sensibilities of adolescence. He was tired of worshiping or 
tyrannizing over the bistred or umbered beauties of mingled 
blood among whom he had been living. Even that piquant 
exhibition which the Bio de Mendoza presents to the- 
amateur of breathing sculpture failed to interest him. He 
was thinking of a far-off village on the other side of the' 
equator, and of the wild girl with whom he used to play and 
quarrel, a creature of a different race from those degenerate 
mongrels. 

“ A game little devil she was, sure enough ! ” — and as 
Dick spoke he bared his wrist to look for the marks she had 
left on it: two small white scars, where the two small sharp 
upper teeth had struck when she flashed at him with her 
eyes sparkling as bright as those glittering stones sewed up- 
in the belt he wore — “ That’s a filly worth noosing ! ” said 
Dick to himself, as he looked in admiration at the sign of 
her spirit and passion. “I wonder if she will bite at 
eighteen as she did at eight! She shall have a chance to 
try, at any rate ! ” 

Such was the self-sacrificing disposition with which 
Bichard Venner, Esq., a passenger by the Condor from Val- 
paraiso, set foot upon his native shore, and turned his face 
in the direction of Bockland, The Mountain and the man- 
sion-house. He had heard something, from time to time, off 
his New-England relatives, and knew that they were living- 
together as he left them. And so he heralded himself to- 
“ My dear Uncle ” by a letter signed “ Your loving nephew,. 
Bichard Venner,” in which letter he told a very frank story 


cousin Richard’s visit. 115 

*©f travel and mercantile adventure, expressed much grati- 
tude for the excellent counsel and example which had helped 
to form his character and preserve him in the midst of tempta- 
tion, inquired affectionately after his uncle’s health, was 
much interested to know whether his lively cousin who used 
to be his playmate had grown up as handsome as she 
promised to be, and announced his intention of paying his 
respects to them both at Rockland. Not long after this came 
.the trunks marked R. Y. which he had sent before him, 
forerunners of his advent: he was not going to wait for a 
reply or an invitation. 

What a sound that is, — the banging down of the pre- 
liminary trunk, without its claimant to give it the life which 
is borrowed by all personal appendages, so long as the 
‘■owner’s hand or eye is on them! If it announce the coming 
‘-of one loved and longed for, how we delight to look at it, 
'to sit down on it, to caress it in our fancies, as a lone exile 
^walking out on a windy pier yearns towards the merchant- 
man lying alongside, with the colors of his own native land at 
lier peak, and the name of the port he sailed from long ago upon 
Rer stern! But if it tell the near approach of the undesired, 
inevitable guest, what sound short of the muffled noises made 
T>y the undertakers as they turn the corners in the dim- 
lighted house, with low shuffle of feet and whispered cautions, 
carries such a sense of knocking-kneed collapse with it as the 
thumping down in the front entry of the heavy portmanteau, 
rammed with the changes of uncounted coming weeks? 

Whether the R. Y. portmanteaus brought one or the other 
-of these emotions to the tenants of the Dudley mansion, it 
might not be easy to settle. Elsie professed to be pleased 
with the thought of having an adventurous young stranger, 
with stories to tell, an inmate of their quiet, not to say dull, 
family. Under almost any other circumstances, her father 
would have been unwilling to take a young fellow of whom 
he knew so little, under his roof; but this was his nephew, 
.and anything that seemed like to amuse or please Elsie was 
.agreeable to him. He had grown almost desperate, and felt 
as if any change in the current of her life and feelings might 
save her from some strange paroxysm of dangerous mental 
-exaltation or sullen perversion of disposition, from which 
=some fearful calamity might come to herself or others. 

Dick had been several weeks at the Dudley mansion. A 


116 


ELSIE VENNER. 


few days before, he had made a sudden dash for the nearest 
large city, — and when the Doctor met him, he was just return- 
ing from his visit. 

It had been a curious meeting between the two young per- 
sons, who had parted so young and after such strange rela- 
tions with each other. When Dick first presented himself 
at the mansion, not one in the house would have known him 
for the boy who had left them all so suddenly years ago. 
He was so dark, partly from his descent, partly from long 
habits of exposure, that Elsie looked almost fair beside him.. 
He had something of the family beauty which belonged to 
his cousin, but his eye had a fierce passion in it, very unlike 
the cold glitter of Elsie’s. Like many people of strong and 
imperious temper, he was soft-voiced and very gentle in his- 
address, when he had no special reason for being otherwise. 
He soon found reasons enough to be as amiable as he could 
force himself to be with his uncle and his cousin. Elsie was- 
to his fancy. She had a strange attraction for him, quite 
unlike anything he had ever known in other women. There 
was something, too, in early associations: when those wha 
parted as children meet as man and woman, there is always 
a renewal of that early experience which followed the taste- 
of the forbidden fruit, — a natural blush of consciousness, not 
without its charm. 

Nothing could be more becoming than the behavior of' 
“ Richard Venner, Esquire, the guest of Dudley Venner,. 
Esquire, at his noble mansion,” as he was announced in 
the Court column of the “ Rockland Weekly Universe.”’ 
He was pleased to find himself treated with kindness 
and attention as a relative. He made himself very 
agreeable by abundant details concerning the religious,, 
political, social, commercial, and educational progress of the 
South American cities and states. He was himself much 
interested in everything that was going on about the Dudley 
mansion, walked all over it, noticed its valuable wood-lots 
with special approbation, was delighted with the grand old 
house and its furniture, and would not be easy until he had 
seen all the family silver and heard its history. In return, 
he had much to tell of his father, now dead, — the only one of 
the Venners, besides themselves, in whose fate his uncle was. 
interested. With Elsie, he was subdued and almost tender 


cousin Richard’s visit. 117 

in his manner; with the few visitors whom they saw, shy 
and silent, — perhaps a little watchful, if any young man 
happened to be among them. 

Young fellows placed on their good behavior are apt to 
get restless and nervous, all ready to fly off into some mis- 
chief or other. Dick Venner had his half -tamed horse with 
him to work off his suppressed life with. When the savage 
passion of his young blood came over him, he would fetch 
out the mustang, screaming and kicking as these amiable 
beasts are wont to do, strap the Spanish saddle tight to his 
back, vault into it, and after getting away from the village, 
strike the long spurs into his sides and whirl away in a wild 
gallop, until the black horse was flecked with white foam, 
and the cruel steel points were red with his blood. When 
horse and rider were alike tired, he would fling the bridle on 
his neck and saunter homeward, always contriving to get 
bo the stable in a quiet way, and coming into the house as 
calm as a bishop after a sober trot on his steady-going cob. 

After a few weeks of this kind of life, he began to want 
some more fierce excitement. He had tried making down- 
right love to Elsie, with no great success as yet, in his own 
opinion. The girl was capricious in her treatment of him. 
sometimes scowling and repellent, sometimes familiar, very 
often, as she used to be of old, teasing and malicious. All 
this, perhaps, made her more interesting to a young man 
who was tired of easy conquests. There was a strange fasci- 
nation in her eyes, too, which at times was quite irresistible, 
so that he would feel himself drawn to her by a power which 
seemed to take away his will for the moment. It may have 
been nothing but the common charm of bright eyes; but he 
had never before experienced the same kind of attraction. 

Perhaps she was not so very different from what she had 
been as a child, after all. At any rate, so it seemed to Dick 
Yenner, who, as he said before, had tried making love to 
her. They were sitting alone in the study one day; Elsie 
had round her neck that somewhat peculiar ornament, the 
golden torque, which she had worn to the great party. 
Youth is adventurous and very curious about necklaces, 
brooches, chains, and other such adornments, so long as they 
are worn by young persons of the female sex. Dick was 
seized with a great passion for examining this curious chain, 
and, after some preliminary questions, was rash enough to 


118 


ELSIE VENNER. 


lean towards her and put out his hand toward the neck that: 
lay in the golden coil. She threw her head back, her eyes 
narrowing and her forehead drawing down so that Dick 
thought her head actually flattened itself. He started in- 
voluntarily; for she looked so like the little girl who had. 
struck him with those sharp flashing teeth, that the whole 
scene came back, and he felt the stroke again as if it had. 
just been given, and the two white scars began to sting as 
they did after the old Doctor had burned them with that- 
stick of gray caustic, which looked so like a slate pencil, and. 
felt so much like the end of a red-hot poker. 

It took something more than a gallop to set him right after 
this. The next day he mentioned having received a letter 
from a mercantile agent with whom he had dealings. What 
his business was is, perhaps, none of our business. At any 
rate, it required him to go at once to the city where his cor- 
respondent resided. 

Independently of this “ business ” which called him, there 
may have been other motives, such as have been hinted at- 
People who have been living for a long time in dreary 
country-places, without any emotion beyond such as are 
occasioned by a trivial pleasure or annoyance, often get 
crazy at last for a vital paroxysm of some kind or other.. 
In this state they rush to the great cities for a plunge into 
their turbid lifebaths, with a frantic thirst for every exciting 
pleasure, which makes them the willing and easy victims 
of all those who sell the Devil's wares on commission. The 
less intelligent and instructed class of unfortunates, who 
venture with their ignorance and their instincts into what 
is sometimes called the “life" of great cities, are put 
through a rapid course of instruction which entitles them 
very commonly to a diploma from the police court. But 
they only illustrate the working of the same tendency in' 
mankind at large which has been occasionally noticed in the* 
sons of ministers and other eminently worthy people, by 
many ascribed to that intense congenital hatred for goodness- 
which distinguishes human nature from that of the brute*, 
but perhaps as readily accounted for by considering it as the 
yawning and stretching of a young soul cramped too long 
in one moral posture. 

Richard Yenner was a young man of remarkable ex- 
perience for his years. He ran less risk, therefore, in ex— 


COUSIN RICHARD S VISIT. 


119 


posing himself to the temptations and dangers of a great- 
city than many older men, who, seeking the livelier scenes of 
excitement to be found in large towns as a relaxation after 
the monotonous routine of family-life, are too often taken 
advantage of and made the victims of their sentiments or 
their generous confidence in their fellow-creatures. Such 
was not his destiny. There was something about him which 
looked as if he would not take bullying kindly. He had also 
the advantage of being acquainted with most of those in- 
genious devices by which the proverbial inconstancy of 
fortune is steadied to something more nearly approaching 
fixed laws, and the dangerous risks which have so often led 
young men to ruin and suicide are practically reduced to 
somewhat less than nothing. So that Mr. Richard Yenner 
worked off his nervous energies without any troublesome 
adventure, and was ready to return to Rockland in less than 
a week, without having lightened the money-belt he wore 
round his body, or tarnished the long glittering knife he 
carried in his boot. 

Dick had sent his trunk to the nearest town through which 
the railroad leading to the city passed. He rode off on his 
black horse and left him at the place where he took the 
cars. On arriving at the city station, he took a coach and 
drove to one of the great hotels. Thither drove also a 
sagacious-looking middle-aged man, who entered his name 
as “ W. Thompson ” in the book at the office immediately 
after that of “ R. Yenner.” Mr. “ Thompson ” kept a care- 
lessly observant eye upon Mr. Yenner during his stay at the 
hotel, and followed him to the cars when he left, looking 
over his shoulder when he bought his ticket at the station, 
and seeing him fairly off without obtruding himself in any 
offensive way upon his attention. Mr. Thompson, known in 
other quarters as Detective Policeman Terry, got very little 
by his trouble. Richard Yenner did not turn out to be the 
wffe-prisoner the defaulting cashier, the river-pirate, or the 
great counterfeiter. He paid his hotel-bill as a gentleman 
should always do, if he has the money and can spare it. The 
detective had probably overrated his own sagacity when he 
ventured to suspect Mr. Yenner. He reported to his chief 
that there was a knowing-looking fellow he had been round 
after, but he rather guessed he was nothing more than “ one 
o’ them Southern sportsmen.” 


120 


ELSIE YENNER. 


The poor fellows at the stable where Dick had left his horse 
had had trouble enough with him. One of the ostlers was 
limping about with a lame leg, and another had lost a mouth- 
ful of his coat, which came very near carrying a piece of his 
shoulder with it. When Mr. Venner came back for his 
beast, he was as wild as if he had just been lassoed, scream- 
ing, kicking, rolling over to get rid of his saddle, — and when 
his rider was at last mounted, jumping about in a way to 
dislodge any common horseman. To all this Dick replied by 
sticking his long spurs deeper and deeper into his flanks, 
until the creature found he was mastered, and dashed ofl as 
if all the thistles of the Pampas were pricking him. 

“ One more gallop, Juan!” This was in the last mile of 
the road before he came to the town which brought him in 
sight of the mansion-house. It was in this last gallop that 
the fiery mustang and his rider flashed by the old Doctor. 
Cassia pointed her sharp ears and shied to let them pass. 
The Doctor turned and looked through the little round glass 
in the back of his sulky. 

“Dick Turpin, there, will find more than his match \” 
said the Doctor. 


CHAPTER XII. 


THE APOLLINEAN INSTITUTE. 

( With Extracts from the “ Report of the Committee .”) 

The readers of this narrative will hardly expect any 
elaborate details of the educational management of the 
Apollinean Institute. They cannot be supposed to take the 
same interest in its affairs as was shown by the Annual 
Committees who reported upon its condition and prospects. 
As these Committees were, however, an important part of 
the mechanism of the establishment, some general account 
of their organization and a few extracts from the Report of 
the one last appointed may not be out of place. 

Whether Mr. Silas Peckham had some contrivance for 
packing his Committees, whether they happened always to be 
made up of optimists by nature, whether they were cajoled 
into good-humor by polite attentions, or whether they were 
always really delighted with the wonderful acquirements 
of the pupils and the admirable order of the school, it is 
certain that their Annual Reports were couched in language 
which might warm the heart of the most cold-blooded and 
calculating father that ever had a family of daughters to 
educate. In fact, these Annual Reports were considered by 
Mr. Peckham as his most effective advertisements. 

The first thing, therefore, was to see that the Committee 
was made up of persons known to the public. Some worn- 
out politician, in that leisurely and amiable transition-state 
which comes between official extinction and the paralysis 
which will finish him as soon as his brain gets a little softer, 
made an admirable Chairman for Mr. Peckham, when he 
had the luck to pick up such an article. Old reputations, 
like old fashions, are more prized in the grassy than in the 
stony districts. An effete celebrity, who would never be 
heard of again in the great places until the funeral sermon 
waked up his memory for one parting spasm, finds himself 
in full flavor of renown a little farther back from the chang- 

121 


122 


ELSIE VENNER. 


ing winds of the sea-coast. If such a public character was 
not to be had, so that there was no chance of heading the 
Report with the name of the Honorable Mr. Somebody, the 
next best thing was to get the Reverend Dr. Somebody to 
take that conspicuous position. Then would follow two or 
three local worthies with Esquire after their names. If any 
stray literary personage from one of the great cities 
happened to be within reach, he was pounced upon by Mr. 
Silas Peckham. It was q hard case for the poor man, who 
had traveled a hundred miles or two to the outside suburbs 
after peace and unwatered milk, to be pumped for a speech 
in this unexpected way. It was harder still, if he had been 
induced to venture a few tremulous remarks, to be obliged 
to write them out for the “ Rockland Weekly Universe,” with 
the chance of seeing them used as an advertising certificate 
as long as he lived, if he lived as long as the late IJr. Water- 
house did after giving his certificate in favor of Whitwell’s 
celebrated Cephalic Snuff. 

The Report of the last Committee had been signed by the 

Honorable , late of , as Chairman. (It is with 

reluctance that the name and titles are left in blank ; but our 
public characters are so familiarly known to the whole 
community that this reserve becomes necessary.) The other 
members of the Committee were the Reverend Mr. Butters, 
of a neighboring town, who was to make the prayer before 
the Exercises of the Exhibition, and two or three notabilities 
of Rockland, with geoponic eyes, and glabrous, bumpless 
foreheads. A few extracts from the Report are subjoined: 

u The Committee have great pleasure in recording their 
unanimous opinion, that the Insitution was never in so 
flourishing a condition. . . 

“ The health of the pupils is excellent ; the admirable 
quality of food supplied shows itself in their appearance; 
their blooming aspect excited the admiration of the Com- 
mittee and bears testimony to the assiduity of the excellent 
Matron. 

“ . . . moral and religious condition most encouraging, 
which they cannot but attribute to the personal efforts and 
instruction of the faithful Principal, who considers religious 
instruction a solemn duty which he cannot commit to other 
people. 


THE APOLLINEAN INSTITUTE. 


123 


u . . . great progress in their studies, under the intelligent 
superintendence of the accomplished Principal, assisted by- 
Mr. Badger, [Mr. Langdon’s predecessor,] Miss Darley, the 
lady who superintends the English branches. Miss Crabs, her 
assistant teacher of Modern Languages, and Mr. Schneider, 
teacher of French, German, Latin, and Music. . . 

“ Education is the great business of the Institute. Amuse- 
ments are objects of a secondary nature; but these are by no 
means neglected. . . 

“ . . . English compositions of great originality and 
beauty, creditable alike to the head and heart of their accom- 
plished authors . . . several poems of a very high order of 
merit, which would do honor to the literature of any age or 
country . . . life-like drawings, showing great proficiency. 
. . Many converse fluently in various modern languages . . . 
perform the most difficult airs with the skill of professional 
musicians. . . 

“ . . . advantages unsurpassed, if equaled by those of any 
Institution in the country, and reflecting the highest honor 
on the distinguished Head of the Establishment, Silas Peck- 
ham, Esquire, and his admirable Lady, the Matron, with 
their worthy assistants. . .” 

The perusal of this Report did Mr. Bernard more good 
than a week’s vacation would have done. It gave him such 
a laugh as he had not had for a month. The way in which 
Silas Peckham had made his Committee say what he wanted 
them to — for he recognized a number of expressions in the 
Report as coming directly from the lips of his principal, and 
could not help thinking how cleverly he had forced his 
phrases, as jugglers do the particular card they wish their 
dupe to take — struck him as particularly neat and pleasing. 

He had passed through the sympathetic and emotional 
stages in his new experience and had arrived at the philo- 
sophical and practical state, which takes things coolly, and 
goes to work to set them right. He had breadth enough /of 
view to see that there was nothing so very exceptional in 
this educational trader’s dealings with his subordinates, but 
he had also manly feeling enough to attack the particular 
individual instance of wrong before him. There are plenty 
of dealers in morals, as in ordinary traffic, who confine them- 
selves to wholesale business. They leave the small necessity 


124 


ELSIE VENNER. 


of their next-door neighbor to the retailers, who are poorer 
in statistics and general facts, but richer in the every-day 
charities. Mr. Bernard felt, at first, as one does who sees 
a gray rat steal out of a drain and begin gnawing at the bark 
of some tree loaded with fruit or blossoms, which he will 
soon girdle, if he is let alone. The first impulse is to murder 
him with the nearest ragged stone. Then one remembers 
that he is a rodent, acting after the law of his kind, and 
cools down and is contented to drive him off and guard the 
tree against his teeth for the future. As soon as this is done, 
one can watch his attempts at mischief with a certain amuse- 
ment. 

This was the kind of process Mr. Bernard had gone 
through. First, the indignant surprise of a generous nature, 
when it comes unexpectedly into relations with a mean one. 
Then the impulse of extermination, — a divine instinct, in- 
tended to keep down vermin of all classes to their working 
averages in the economy of Nature. Then a return of cheer- 
ful tolerance, — a feeling, that, if the Deity could bear with 
rats and sharpers, he could ; with a confident trust, that, in the 
long run, terriers and honest men would have the upper hand, 
and a grateful consciousness that he had been sent just at 
the right time to come between a patient victim and the 
master who held her in peonage. 

Having once made up his mind what to do, Mr. Bernard 
was as good-natured and hopeful as ever. He had the great 
advantage, from his professional training, of knowing how 
to recognize and deal with the nervous disturbances to which 
overtasked women are so liable. He saw well enough that 
Helen Darley would certainly kill herself or lose her wits, if 
he could not lighten her labors and lift off a large part of her 
weight of cares. The worst of it was, that she was one of 
those women who naturally overwork themselves, like those 
horses who will go at the top of their pace until they drop. 
Such women are dreadfully unmanageable. It is as hard 
reasoning with them as it would have been reasoning with 
Io, when she was flying over land and sea, driven by the sting 
of the never-sleeping gadfly. 

This was a delicate, interesting game that he played. 
Under one innocent pretext or another, he invaded this or 
that special province she had made her own. He would 
collect the themes and have them all read and marked. 


THE APOLLINEAN INSTITUTE. 


125 


answer all the puzzling questions in mathematics, make the 
other teachers come to him for directions, and in this way 
gradually took upon himself not only all the general superin- 
tendence that belonged to his office, but stole away so many 
of the special duties which might fairly have belonged to his 
assistant, that, before she knew it, she was looking better 
and feeling more cheerful than for many and many a month 
before. 

When the nervous energy is depressed by any bodily cause, 
or exhausted by overworking, there follow effects which have 
often been misinterpreted by moralists, and especially by 
theologians. The conscience itself becomes neuralgic, some- 
times actually inflamed, so that the least touch is agony. Of 
all liars and false accusers, a sick conscience is the most 
inventive and indefatigable. The devoted daughter, wife, 
mother, whose life has been given to unselfish labors, who 
has filled a place which it seems to others only an angel 
would make good, reproaches herself with incompetence and 
neglect of duty. The humble Christian, who has been a 
model to others, calls himself a worm of the dust on one pqge 
of his diary, and arraigns himself on the next for coming 
short of the perfection of an archangel. 

Conscience itself requires a conscience, or nothing can be 
more unscrupulous. It told Saul that he did well in per- 
secuting the Christians. It has goaded countless multitudes; 
of various creeds to endless forms of self-torture. The cities; 
of India are full of cripples it has made. The hill-sides of 
Syria are riddled with holes, where miserable hermits, whose 
lives it had palsied, lived and died like the vermin they 
harbored. Our libraries are crammed with books written by 
spiritual hypochondriacs, who inspected all their moral se- 
cretions a dozen times a day. They are full of interest, but 
they should be transferred from the shelf of the theologian: 
to that of the medical man who makes a study of insanity. 

This was the state into which too much work and too much 
responsibility were bringing Helen Darley, when the new 
master came and lifted so much of the burden that was. 
crushing her as must be removed before she could have a 
chance to recover her natural elasticity and buoyancy. 
Many of the noblest women, suffering like her, but less 
fortunate in being relieved at the right moment, die worried 
out of life by the perpetual teasing of this inflamed, neuralgic 


126 


ELSIE VENNER. 


conscience. So subtile is the line which separates the true 
and almost angelic sensibility of a healthy, but exalted 
nature, from the soreness of a soul which is sympathizing 
with a morbid state of the body, that it is no wonder they 
are often confounded. And thus many good women are 
suffered to perish by that form of spontaneous combustion 
in which the victim goes on toiling day and night with the 
hidden fire consuming her, until all at once her cheek 
whitens, and, as we look upon her, she drops away, a heap 
of ashes. The more they overwork themselves, the more 
exacting becomes the sense of duty, — as the draught of the 
locomotive’s furnace blows stronger and makes the fire burn 
more fiercely, the faster it spins along the track. 

It is not very likely, as was said at the beginning of this 
chapter, that we shall trouble ourselves a great deal about 
the internal affairs of the Apollinean Institute. These 
schools are, in the nature of things, not so very unlike each 
other as to require a minute description for each particular 
one among them. They have all very much the same general 
features, pleasing and displeasing. All feeding-establish- 
ments have something odious about them, — from the 
wretched country-houses where paupers are farmed out to the 
lowest bidder, up to the commons-tables at colleges, and even 
the fashionable boarding-house. A person’s appetite should 
be at war with no other purse than his own. Young people, 
especially, who have a bone-factory at work in them, and 
have to feed the living looms of innumerable growing 
tissues, should be provided for, if possible, by those who love 
them like their own flesh and blood. Elsewhere their appe- 
ties will be sure to make them enemies, or, what are almost 
as bad, friends whose interests are at variance with the 
claims of their exacting necessities and demands. 

Besides, all commercial transactions in regard to the most 
sacred interests of life are hateful even to those who profit 
by them. The clergyman, the physician, the teacher, must 
be paid; but each of them, if his duty be performed in the 
true spirit, can hardly help a shiver of disgust when money 
is counted out to him for administering the consolations of 
religion, for saving some precious life, for sowing the seeds 
of Christian civilization in young ingenuous souls. 

And yet all these schools, with their provincial French 
and their mechanical accomplishments, with their cheap 


THE APOLLINEAN INSTITUTE. 


127 


parade of diplomas and commencements and other public 
honors, have an ever fresh interest to all who see the task 
they are performing in our new social order. These girls are 
not being educated for governesses, or to be exported, with 
other manufactured articles, to colonies where there happens 
to be a surplus of males. Most of them will be wives, and 
every American-born husband is a possible President of 
these United States. Any one of these girls may be a four- 
years’ queen. There is no sphere of human activity so 
exalted that she may not be called upon to fill it. 

But there is another consideration of far higher interest. 
The education of our community to all that is beautiful is 
flowing in mainly through its women, and that to a con- 
siderable extent by the aid of these large establishments, the 
least perfect of which do something to stimulate the higher 
tastes and partially instruct them. Sometimes there is, 
perhaps, reason to fear that girls will be too highly educated 
for their own happiness, if they are lifted by their culture 
out of the range of the practical and every-day working 
youth by whom they are surrounded. But this is a risk we 
must take. Our young men come into active life so early, 
that, if our girls were not educated to something beyond 
mere practical duties, our material prosperity would outstrip 
our culture; as it often does in large places where money is 
made too rapidly. This is the meaning, therefore, of that 
somewhat ambitious programme common to most of these 
large institutions, at which we sometimes smile, perhaps 
unwisely or uncharitably. 

We shall take it for granted that the routine of instruc- 
tion went on at the Apollinean Institute much as it does in 
other schools of the same class. People, young or old, are 
wonderfully different, if we contrast extremes in pairs. They 
approach much nearer, if we take them in groups of twenty. 
Take two separate hundreds as they come, without choosing, 
and you get the gamut of human character in both so com- 
pletely that you can strike many chords in each which shall 
he in perfect unison with corresponding ones in the other. 
If we go a step farther, and compare the population of two 
villages of the same race and region, there is such a regularly 
graduated distribution and parallelism of character, that it 
seems as if Nature must turn out human beings in sets like 
chessmen. 


128 


ELSIE VENNER. 


It must be confessed that the position in which Mr. Ber- 
nard now found himself had a pleasing danger about it 
which might well justify all the fears entertained on his 
account by more experienced friends, when they learned 
that he was engaged in a Young Ladies’ Seminary. The 
school never went on more smoothly than during the first 
period of his administration, after he had arranged its 
duties, and taken his share, and even more than his share, 
upon himself. But human nature does not wait for the 
diploma of the Apollinean Institute to claim the exercise of 
its instincts and faculties. These young girls saw but little 
of the youth of the neighborhood. The mansion-house young 
men were off at college or in the cities, or making love to 
each other’s sisters, or at any rate unavailable for some reason 
or other. There were a few “ clerks,” — that is, young men 
who attended shops, commonly called “ stores,” — who were 
fond of walking by the Institute, when they were off duty, 
for the sake of exchanging a word or a glance with any one 
of the young ladies they might happen to know, if any such 
were stirring abroad: crude young men, mostly with a great 
many “ Sirs ” and “ Ma’ams ” in their speech, and with that 
style of address sometimes acquired in the retail business, as 
if the salesman were recommending himself to a customer, — 
“ First-rate family article, Ma’am; warranted to wear a life- 
time; just one yard and three quarters in this pattern, 
Ma’am ; shan’t I have the pleasure ? ” and so forth. If there 
had been ever so many of them, and if they had been ever 
so fascinating, the quarantine of the Institute was too 
rigorous to allow any romantic infection to be introduced 
from without. 

Anybody might see what would happen, with a good-look- 
ing, well-dressed, well-bred young man, who had the au- 
thority of a master, it is true, but the manners of a friend 
and equal, moving about among these young girls day after 
day, his eyes meeting theirs, his breath mingling with theirs, 
his voice growing familiar to them, never in any harsh tones, 
often soothing, encouraging, always sympathetic, with its* 
male depth and breadth of sound among the chorus of' 
trebles, as if it were a river in which a hundred of these little 
piping streamlets might lose themselves; anybody might see 
what would happen. Young girls wrote home to their par- 
ents that they enjoyed themselves much, this term, at the 


THE APOLLINEAN INSTITUTE. 


129 


Institute, and thought they were making rapid progress in 
their studies. There was a great enthusiasm for the young 
master’s reading-classes in English poetry. Some of the 
poor little things began to adorn themselves with an extra 
ribbon, or a bit of such jewelry as they had before kept for 
great occasions. Dear souls ! they only half knew what they 
were doing it far. Does the bird know why its feathers grow 
more brilliant and its voice becomes musical in the pairing 
season ? 

And so, in the midst of this quiet inland town, where a 
mere accident had placed Mr. Bernard Langdon, there was 
a concentration of explosive materials which might at any 
time change its Arcadian and academic repose into a scene 
of dangerous commotion. What said Helen Darley, when 
she saw with her woman’s glance that more than one girl, 
when she should be looking at her book, was looking over 
it toward the master’s desk? Was her own heart warmed by 
any livelier feeling than gratitude, as its life began to flow 
with fuller pulses, and the morning sky again looked bright 
and the flowers recovered their lost fragrance? Was there 
any strange, mysterious affinity between the master and the 
dark girl who sat by herself ? Could she call him at will by 

looking at him ? Could it be that ? It made her shiver 

to think of it. — And who was that strange horseman who 
passed Mr. Bernard at dusk the other evening, looking so 
like Mephistopheles galloping hard to be in season at the 
witches’ Sabbath-gathering? That must be the cousin of 
Elsie’s who wants to marry her, they say. A dangerous- 
looking fellow for a rival, if one took a fancy to the dark 
girl! And who is she, and what? — by what demon is she 
haunted, by what taint is she blighted, by what curse is she 
followed, by what destiny is she marked, that her strange 
beauty has such a terror in it, and that hardly one shall dare 
to love her, and her eye glitters always, but warms for 
none? 

Some of these questions are ours. Some were Helen Dar- 
ley’s. Some of them mingled with the ^dreams of Bernard 
Langdon, as he slept the night after meeting the strange 
horseman. In the morning he happened to be a little late 
in entering the schoolroom. There was something between 
the leaves of the Virgil which lay upon his desl$. He opened 
it and saw a freshly gathered mountain-flower. He looked at 


130 


ELSIE VENNER. 


Elsie, instinctively, involuntarily. She had another such 
flower on her breast. 

A young girl’s graceful compliment, — that is all, — no 
doubt, — no doubt. It is odd that the flower should have 
happened to be laid between the leaves of the Fourth Book 
of the ^Eneid and at this line, — 

“ Incipit effari, mediaque in voce resistit.” 

A remembrance of ancient superstition flashed through the 
master’s mind, and he determined to try the Sortes Vir- 
gilianse. He shut the volume, and opened it again at a ven- 
ture. — The story of Laocoon ! 

He read, with a strange feeling of unwilling fascination, 
from “ Horresco referens ” to “ Bis medium amplexi,” and 
flung the book from him, as if its leaves had been steeped in 
the subtle poisons that princes die of. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


CURIOSITY. 

People will talk. Caiscun lo dice is a tune that is played 
oftener than the national air of this country or any other. 

“ That’s what they say. Means to marry her, if she is his 
•cousin. Got money himself, — that’s the story, — but wants 
to come and live in the old place, and get the Dudley prop- 
erty by-and-by.” — “ Mother’s folks was wealthy.” — “ Twenty- 
three to twenty-five years old.” — “ He a’n’t more’n twenty, or 
twenty-one at the outside,” — “ Looks as if he knew too much 
to be only twenty year old.” — Guess he’s been through the 
mill, — don’t look so green, anyhow, — hey ? Did y’ ever 
mind that cut over his left eyebrow ? ” 

So they gossiped in Rockland. The young fellows could 
make nothing of Dick Yenner. He was shy and proud with 
the few who made advances to him. The young ladies called 
him handsome and romantic, but he looked at them like a 
many-tailed pacha who was in the habit of ordering his wives 
by the dozen. 

“ What do you think of that young man over there at the 
Venners’? ” said Miss Arabella Thornton to her father. 

“ Handsome,” said the Judge, “ but dangerous-looking. 
His face is indictable at common law. Do you know, my 
dear, I think there is a blank at the Sheriff’s office, with a 
place for his name in it ? ” 

The Judge paused and looked grave, as if he had just 
listened to the verdict of the jury and was going to pro- 
nounce sentence. 

“ Have you heard anything against him ? ” said the 
Judge’s daughter. 

“ Nothing. But I don’t like these mixed bloods and half- 
told stories. Besides, I have seen a good many desperate 
fellows at the bar, and I have a fancy they all have a look 
belonging to them. The worst one I ever sentenced looked a 

331 


132 


ELSIE VENDER. 


good deal like this follow. A wicked mouth. All our other 
features are made for us ; but a man makes his own mouth, 

“ Who was the person you sentenced ? ” 

“ He was a young fellow that undertook to garrote a man 
who had won his money at cards. The same slender shape*, 
the same cunning, fierce look, smoothed over with a plausible 
air. Depend upon it, there is an expression in all the sort 
of people who live by their wits when they can, and by worse 
weapons when their wits fail them, that we old law-doctors 
know just as well as the medical counselors know the marks 
of disease in a man’s face. Dr. Kittredge looks at a man 
and says he is going to die ; I look at another man and say he 
is going to be hanged, if nothing happens. I don’t say so 
of this one, but I don’t like his looks. I wonder Dudley 
Venner takes to him so kindly.” 

“ It’s all for Elsie’s sake,” said Miss Thornton ; “ I feel 
quite sure of that. He never does anything that is not 
meant for her in some way. I suppose it amuses her to have 
her cousin about the house. She rides a good deal since 
he has been here. Have you seen them galloping about to- 
gether? He looks like my idea of a Spanish bandit on that 
wild horse of his.” 

“ Possibly he has been one, — or is one,” said the Judge, — 
smiling as men smile whose lips have often been freighted 
with the life and death of their fellow-creatures. “ I met 
them riding the other day. Perhaps Dudley is right, if it 
pleases her to have a companion. What will happen, though, 
if he makes love to her? Will Elsie be easily taken with 
such a fellow? You young folks are supposed to know more 
about these matters than we middle-aged people.” 

“Nobody can tell. Elsie is not like anybody else. The 
girls who have seen most of her think she hates men, all but 
‘ Dudley,’ as she calls her father. Some of them doubt 
whether she loves him. They doubt whether she can love 
anything human, except perhaps the old black woman who 
has taken care of her since she was a baby. The village 
people have the strangest stories about her, you know what 
they call her ? ” 

She whispered three words in her father’s ear. The 
Judge changed color as she»*spoke, sighed deeply, and was, 
silent as if lost in thought for a moment. 

“ I remember her mother,” he said, “ 60 well ! A sweeter 


CURIOSITY. 


133 


creature never lived. Elsie has something of her in her 
look, but those are not her mother’s eyes. They were dark, 
but soft, as in all I ever saw of her race. Her father’s are 
dark too, but mild, and even tender, I should say. I don’t 
know what there is about Elsie’s, — but do you know, my 
dear, I find myself curiously influenced by them? I have 
had to face a good many sharp eyes and hard ones, — murder- 
ers’ eyes and pirates’, — men who had to be watched in the 
bar, where they stood on trial, for fear they should spring 
on the prosecuting officers like tigers, — but I never saw such 
eyes as Elsie’s; and yet they have a kind of drawing virtue 
or power about them, — I don’t know what else to call it: 
have you never observed this ? ” 

His daughter smiled in her turn. 

“Never observed it? Why, of course, nobody could be 
with Elsie Yenner and not observe it. There are a good 
many other strange things about her: did you ever notice 
how she dresses ? ” 

“ Why, handsomely enough, I should think,” the Judge 
answered. “I suppose she dresses as she likes, and sends 
to the city for what she wants. What do you mean in par- 
ticular? We men notice effects in dress, but not much in 
detail.” 

“ You never noticed the colors and patterns of her dresses? 
You never remarked anything curious about her ornaments? 
Well! I don’t believe you men know, half the time, whether 
a lady wears a ninepenny collar or a thread-lace cape worth 
a thousand dollars. I don’t believe you know a silk dress 
from a bombazine one. I don’t believe you can tell whether 
a woman is in black or in colors, unless you happen to know 
she is a widow. Elsie Yenner has a strange taste in dress, 
let me tell you. She sends for the oddest patterns of stuffs, 
and picks out the most curious things at the jeweler’s, when- 
ever she goes to town with her father. They say the old 
Doctor tells her father to let her have her way about all 
such matters. Afraid of her mind, if she is contradicted, I 
suppose. — You’ve heard about her going to school at that 
place, — the ‘ Institoot,’ as those people call it ? They say 
she’s bright enough in her way, — has studied at home, you 
know, with her father a good deal, — knows some modern lan- 
guages and Latin, I believe: at any rate, she would have it 
so, — she must go to the 1 Institoot.’ They have a very good 


134 


ELSIE VENNER. 


female teacher there, I hear ; and the new master, that young- 
Mr. Langdon, looks and talks like a well-educated young man. 
I wonder what they’ll make of Elsie, between them ! ” 

So they talked at the Judge’s in the calm, judicial-looking 
mansion-house, in the grave, still library, with the troops of 
wan-hued law-books staring blindly out of their titles at. 
them as they talked, like the ghosts of dead attorneys fixed 
motionless and speechless, each with a thin, golden film over 
his unwinking eyes. 

In the mean time everything went on quietly enough after 
Cousin Richard’s return. A man of sense, — that is, a man 
who knows perfectly well that a cool head is worth a dozen 
warm hearts in carrying the fortress of a woman’s affections,, 
(not yours, “ Astarte,” nor yours, “ Viola,”) — who knows that 
men are rejected by women every day because they, the men,, 
love them, and are accepted every day because they do not, 
and therefore can study the arts of pleasing, — a man of 
sense, when he finds he has established his second parallel 
too soon, retires quietly to his first, and begins working on 
his covered ways again. [The whole art of love may be read 
in any Encyclopaedia under the title Fortification, where the 
terms just used are explained.] After the little adventure 
of the necklace, Dick retreated at once to his first parallel. 
Elsie loved riding, — and would go off with him on a gallop 
now and then. He was master of all those strange Indian 
horseback-feats which shame the tricks of the circus- 
riders, and used to astonish and almost amuse her some- 
times by disappearing from his saddle, like a phantom horse- 
man, lying flat against tfie side of the bounding crea- 
ture that bore him, as if he were a hunting leopard with his 
claws in the horse’s flank and flattening himself out against 
his heaving ribs. Elsie knew a little Spanish too, which she 
had learned from the young person who had taught her 
dancing, and Dick enlarged her vocabulary with a few soft 
phrases, and would sing her a song sometimes, touching the 
air upon an ancient-looking guitar they had found with the 
ghostly things in the garret, — a quaint old instrument, 
marked E. M. on the back, and supposed to have belonged to 
a certain Elizabeth Mascarene, before mentioned in connec- 
tion with a work of art, — a fair, dowerless lady, who smiled 
and sung and faded away, unwedded, a hundred years ago, 
as dowerless ladies, not a few, are smiling and singing and 


CURIOSITY. 135 

fading now, — God grant each of them His love, — and one 
human heart as its interpreter! 

As for school, Elsie w T ent or stayed away as she liked. 
Sometimes, when they thought she was at her desk in the 
great schoolroom, she would be on The Mountain, — alone al- 
ways. Dick wanted to go with her, but she would never let 
him. Once, when she had followed the zigzag path a little 
way up, she looked back and caught a glimpse of him follow- 
ing her. She turned and passed him without a word, but. 
giving him a look which seemed to make the scars on his 
wrists tingle, went to her room, where she locked herself up, 
and did not come out again until evening, — old Sophy hav- 
ing brought her food, and set it down, not speaking, but 
looking into her eyes inquiringly, like a dumb beast trying: 
to feel out his master’s will in his face. The evening was* 
clear and the moon shining. As Dick sat at his chamber- 
window, looking at the mountain-side, he saw a gray-dressed 
figure flit between the trees and steal along the narrow path 
which led upward. Elsie’s pillow was unpressed that night* 
but she had not been missed by the household, — for Dick 
knew enough to keep his own counsel. The next morning 
she avoided him and went off early to school. It was the 
same morning that the young master found the flower be- 
tween the leaves of his Virgil. 

The girl got over her angry fit, and was pleasant enough 
with her cousin for a few days after this; but she shunned 
rather than sought him. She had taken a new interest in 
her books, and especially in certain poetical readings which 
the master conducted with the elder scholars. This gave 
Master Langdon a good chance to study her ways when her 
eye was on her book, to notice the inflections of her voice,, 
to watch for any expression of her sentiments; for, to tell 
the truth, he had a kind of fear that the girl had taken a 
fancy to him, and, though she interested him, he did not 
wish to study her heart from the inside. 

The more he saw her, the more the sadness of her beauty 
wrought upon him. She looked as if she might hate, but 
could not love. She hardly smiled at anything, spoke rarely, 
but seemed to feel that her natural power of expression lay 
all in her bright eyes, the force of which so many had felt* 
but none perhaps had tried to explain to themselves. A per- 
son accustomed to watch the faces of those who were ailing 


136 


ELSIE VENNER. 


in body or mind, and to search in every line and tint for 
some underlying source of disorder, could hardly help an- 
alyzing the impression such a face produced upon him. The 
light of those beautiful eyes was like the luster of ice; in 
all her features there was nothing of that human warmth 
which shows that sympathy has reached the soul beneath the 
mask of flesh it wears. The look was that of remoteness, of 
utter isolation. There was in its stony apathy, it seemed to 
him, the pathos which we find in the blind who show no film 
or speck over the organs of sight; for Nature had meant 
her to be lovely, and left out nothing but love. And yet the 
master could not help feeling that some instinct was work- 
ing in this girl which was in some way leading her to seek 
his presence. She did not lift her glittering eyes upon him 
at the first. It seemed strange that she did not, for they 
were surely her natural weapons of conquest. Her color 
did not come and go like that of young girls under excite- 
ment. She had a clear brunette complexion, a little sun- 
touched, it may be, — for the master noticed once, when her 
necklace was slightly displaced, that a faint ring or band of 
a little lighter shade than the rest of the surface encircled 
her neck. What was the slight peculiarity of her enuncia- 
tion, when she read? Not a lisp certainly, but the least 
possible imperfection in articulating some of the lingual 
sounds, — just enough to be noticed at first, and quite for- 
gotten after being a few times heard. 

Not a word about the flower on either side. It was not 
uncommon for the schoolgirls to leave a rose or a pink or 
wild flower on the teacher’s desk. Finding it in the Virgil was 
nothing, after all ; it was a little delicate flower, which looked 
as if it were made to press, and it was probably shut in by 
accident at the particular place where he found it. He took 
it into his head to examine it in a botanical point of view. 
He found it was not common, — that it grew only in certain 
localities, — and that one of these was among the rocks of the 
eastern spur of The Mountain. 

It happened to come into his head how the Swiss youth 
climbed the sides of the Alps to find the flower called the 
Edelweiss for the maidens whom they wish to please. It is a 
pretty fancy, that of scaling some dangerous height before 
the dawn, so as to gather the flower in its freshness, that the 
favored maiden may wear it to church on Sunday morning, 


CURIOSITY. 


1ST 


a proof at once of her lover’s devotion and his courage. Mr_ 
Bernard determined to explore the region where this flower 
was said to grow, that he might see where the wild girl 
sought the blossoms of which Nature was so jealous. 

It was a warm, fair Saturday afternoon that he under- 
took his land-voyage of discovery. He had more curiosity, 
it may be, than he would have owned; for he had heard of 
the girl’s wandering habits, and the guesses about her sylvan 
haunts, and was thinking what the chances were that he 
should meet her in some strange place, or come upon traces, 
of her which would tell secrets she would not care to have 
known. 

The woods are all alive to one who walks through them- 
with his mind in an excited state, and his eyes and ears 
wide open. The trees are always talking, not merely whisper- 
ing with their leaves, (for every tree talks to itself in that 
way, even when it stands alone in the middle of a pasture,) 
but grating their boughs against each other, as old horn- 
handed farmers press their dry, rustling palms together, drop- 
ping a nut or a leaf or a twig, clicking to the tap of a wood- 
pecker, or rustling as a squirrel flashes along a branch. It was 
now the season of singing-birds, and the woods were haunted 
with mysterious, tender music. The voices of the birds which 
love the deeper shades of the forest are sadder than those of the 
open fields : these are the nuns who have taken the veil, the 
hermits that have hidden themselves away from the world 
and tell their griefs to the infinite listening Silences of the 
wilderness, — for the one deep inner silence that Nature 
breaks with her fitful superficial sounds becomes multiplied 
as the image of a star in ruffled waters. Strange! The 
woods at first convey the impression of profound repose, and 
yet, if you watch their ways with open ear, you find the life 
which is in them is restless and nervous as that of a woman :: 
the little twigs are crossing and twining and separating like 
slender fingers that cannot be still; the stray leaf is to be 
flattened into its place like a truant curl ; the limbs sway and 
twist, impatient of their constrained attitude; and the 
rounded masses of foliage swell upward and subside from 
time to time with long soft sighs, and, it may be, the falling 
of a few rain-drops which had lain hidden among the deeper 
shadows. I pray you, notice, in the sweet summer days 
which will soon see you among the mountains, this inward 


138 


ELSIE VEKNER. 


tranquillity that belongs to the heart of the woodland, with 
this nervousness, for I. do not know what else to call it, of 
outer movement. One would say, that Nature, like untrained 
^persons, could not sit still without nestling about or doing 
something with her limbs or features, and that high breed- 
ing was only to be looked for in trim gardens, where the soul 
of the trees is ill at ease perhaps, but their manners are 
unexceptionable, and the rustling branch or leaf falling out 
of season is an indecorum. The real forest is hardly still 
-except in the Indian summer; then there is death in the 
Jiouse, and they are waiting for the sharp shrunken months 
to come with white raiment for the summer’s burial. 

There were many hemlocks in this neighborhood, the 
grandest and most solemn of all the forest-trees in the moun- 
tain regions. Up to a certain period of growth they are emi- 
nently beautiful, their boughs disposed in the most graceful 
pagoda-like series of close terraces, thick and dark with 
green crystalline leaflets. In spring the tender shoots come 
out of a paler green, finger-like, as if they were pointing to 
the violets at their feet. But when the trees have grown old, 
and their rough boles measure a yard and more through 
their diameter, they are no longer beautiful, but they have 
.a sad solemnity all their own, too full of meaning to require 
the heart’s comment to be framed in words. Below, all their 
earthward-looking branches are sapless and shattered, splint- 
ered by the weight of many winters’ snows; above, they are 
still green and full of life, but their summits overtop all the 
deciduous trees around them, and in their companionship 
with heaven they are alone. On these the lightning loves to 
fall. One such Mr. Bernard saw, — or rather, what had been 
one such; for the bolt had torn the tree like an explosion 
from within, and the ground was strewed all around the 
broken stump with flakes of rough bark and strips and chips 
of shivered wood, into which the old tree had been rent by 
the bursting rocket from the thunder-cloud. 

The master had struck up The Mountain obliquely 

from the western side of the Dudley mansion-house. In 
this way he ascended until he reached a point many hundred 
feet above the level of the plain, and commanding all the 
•country beneath and around. Almost at his feet he saw the 
mansion-house, the chimney standing out of the middle of 
the roof, or rather, like a black square hole in it, — the trees 


CURIOSITY. 


133 * 

almost directly over their stems, the fences as lines, the: 
whole nearly as an architect would draw a ground-plan of 
the house and the inclosure around it. It frightened him 
to see how the huge masses of rock and old forest-growths, 
hung over the home below. As he descended a little and 
drew near the ledge of evil name, he was struck with the 
appearance of a long narrow fissure that ran parallel with 
it and above it for many rods, not seemingly of very old 
standing, — for there were many fibers of roots which had evi- 
dently been snapped asunder when the rent took place, and 
some of which were still succulent in both separated portions. 

Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, when he set forth, not to 
come back before he had examined the dreaded ledge. He had 
half persuaded himself that it was scientific curiosity. He 
wished to examine the rocks, to see what flowers grew there,, 
and perhaps to pick up an adventure in the zoological line; 
for he had on a pair of high, stout boots, and he carried a 
stick in his hand, which was forked at one extremity so as 
to be very convenient to hold down a crotalus with, if he 
should happen to encounter one. He knew the aspect of 
the ledge from a distance; for its bald and leprous-looking- 
declivities stood out in their nakedness from the wooded, 
sides of The Mountain, when this was viewed from certain 
points of the vilage. But the nearer aspect of the blasted 
region had something frightful in it. The cliffs were water- 
worn, as if they had been gnawed for thousands of years by 
hungry waves. In some places they overhung their base 
so as to look like leaning towers which might topple over at 
any minute. In other parts they were scooped into niches 
or caverns. Here and there they were cracked in deep fis- 
sures, some of them of such width that one might enter them, 
if he cared to run the risk of meeting the regular tenants, 
who might treat him as an intruder. 

Parts of the ledge were cloven perpendicularly, with, 
nothing but cracks or slightly projecting edges in which 
or on which a foot could find hold. High up on one of these^ 
precipitous walls of rock he saw some tufts of flowers, and 
knew them at once for the same that he had found between 
the leaves of his Virgil. Not there, surely! No woman 
would have clung against that steep, rough parapet to 
gather an idle blossom. And yet the master looked round, 
everywhere, and even up the side of that rock, to see if there 


140 


ELSIE VENNER. 


were no signs of a woman’s footstep. He peered about cu- 
xiously, as if his eye might fall on some of those fragments 
ot dress which women leave after them, whenever they run 
against each other or against anything else, — in crowded 
ballrooms, in the brushwood after picnics, on the fences 
after rambles, scattered round over every place which has 
witnessed an act of violence, where rude hands have been 
laid upon them. Nothing. Stop, though, one moment. 
That stone is smooth and polished, as if it had been some- 
what worn by the pressure of human feet. There is one twig 
broken among the stems of that clump of shrubs. He put 
his foot upon the stone and took hold of the close-clinging 
shrub. In this way he turned a sharp angle of the rock and 
found himself on a natural platform, which lay in front of 
one of the wider fissures, — whether the mouth of a cavern 
or not he could not yet tell. A flat stone made an easy seat, 
upon which he sat down, as he was very glad to do, and 
looked mechanically about him. A small fragment splintered 
from the rock was at his feet. He took it and threw it down 
the declivity a little below where he sat. He looked about 
for a stem or a straw of some kind to bite upon, — a country- 
instinct, — relic, no doubt, of the old vegetable-feeding habits 
of Eden. Is that a stem or a straw? He picked it up. It 
wCs a hair-pin. 

To say that Mr. Langdon had a strange sort of thrill 
«hoot through him at the sight of this harmless little imple- 
ment would be a statement not at variance with the fact 
of the case. That smooth stone had been often trodden, and 
by what foot he could not doubt. He rose up from his seat 
to look round for other signs of a woman’s visits. What if 
there is a cavern here, where she has a retreat, fitted up, per- 
haps, as anchorites fitted their cells, — nay, it may be, car- 
peted and mirrored, and with one of those tiger-skins for 
a couch, such as they say the girl loves to lie on? Let us 
look, at any rate. 

Mr. Bernard walked to the mouth of the cavern or fissure 
and looked into it. His look was met by the glitter of two 
diamond eyes, small, sharp, cold, shining out of the dark- 
ness, but gliding with a smooth, steady motion towards the 
light, and himself. He stood fixed, struck dumb, staring 
back into them with dilating pupils and sudden numbness 
of fear that cannot move, as in the terror of dreams. The 


CURIOSITY. 


141 


two sparks of light came forward until they grew to circles 
of flame, and all at once lifted themselves up as if in angry 
surprise. Then for the first time thrilled in Mr. Bernard’s 
ears the dreadful sound that nothing which breathes, be it- 
man or brute, can hear unmoved, — the long, loud, stinging 
whirr, as the huge, thick-bodied reptile shook his many- 
jointed rattle and adjusted his loops for the fatal stroke. 
His eyes were drawn as with magnets toward the circles of 
flame. His ears rung as in the overture to the swooning 
dream of chloroform. Hature was before man with her 
anaesthetics: the cat’s first shake stupefies the mouse; the 
lion’s first shake deadens the man’s fear and feeling; and 
the crotalus paralyzes before he strikes. He waited as in 
a trance, — waited as one that longs to have the blow fall, 
and all over, as the man who shall be in two pieces in a sec- 
ond waits for the ax to drop. But while he looked straight 
into the flaming eyes, it seemed to him that they were losing 
their light and terror, that they were growing tame and dull ; 
the charm was dissolving, the numbness was passing away, 
he could move once more. He heard a light breathing close 
to his ear, and, half turning, saw the face of Elsie Venner, 
looking motionless into the reptile’s eyes, which had shrunk: 
and faded under the stronger enchantment of her own. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


FAMILY SECRETS. 

It was commonly understood in the town of Rockland 
“that Dudley Venner had had a great deal of trouble with 
that daughter of his, so handsome, yet so peculiar, about 
whom there were so many strange stories. There was no 
end to the tales which were told of her extraordinary doings. 
Yet her name was never coupled with that of any youth or 
man, until this cousin had provoked remark by his visit; 
and even then it was oftener in the shape of wondering 
conjectures whether he would dare to make love to her, than 
in any pretended knowledge of their relations to each other, 
that the public tongue exercised its village-prerogative of 
tattle. 

The more common version of the trouble at the mansion- 
house was this: — Elsie was not exactly in her right mind. 
Her temper was singular, her tastes were anomalous, her 
habits were lawless, her antipathies were many and intense, 
and she was liable to explosions of ungovernable anger. 
Some said that was not the worst of it. At nearly fifteen 
years old, when she was growing fast, and in an irritable 
state of mind and body, she had had a governess placed over 
her for whom she had conceived an aversion. It was whis- 
pered among a few who knew more of the family secrets 
than others, that, worried and exasperated by the presence 
and jealous oversight of this person, Elsie had attempted to 
get finally rid of her by unlawful means, such as young girls 
have been known to employ in their straits, and to which 
the sex at all ages has a certain instinctive tendency, in pref- 
erence to more palpable instruments for the righting of its 
wrongs. At any rate this governess had been taken sud- 
denly ill, and the Doctor had been sent for at midnight. Old 
Sophy had taken her master into a room apart, and said 
a few words to him which turned him as white as a sheet. 
As soon as he recovered himself, he sent Sophy out, called 

142 


FAMILY SECRETS. 


143 


in the old Doctor, and gave him some few hints, on which 
he acted at once, and had the satisfaction of seeing his 
patient out of danger before he left in the morning. It is 
proper to say, that, during the following days, the most 
thorough search was made in every nook and cranny of those 
parts of the house which Elsie chiefly haunted, but nothing 
was found which might be accused of having been the in- 
tentional cause of the probably accidental sudden illness of 
the governess. From this time forward her father was never 
easy. Should he keep her apart, or shut her up, for fear 
of risk to others, and so lose every chance of restoring her 
mind to its healthy tone by kindly influences and intercourse 
with wholesome natures ? There was no proof, only presump- 
tion, as to the agency of Elsie in the matter referred to. 
But the doubt was worse, perhaps, than certainty would have 
been, — 'for then he would have known what to do. 

He took the old Doctor as his adviser. The shrewd old 
man listened to the father’s story, his explanations of possi- 
bilities, of probabilities, of dangers, of hopes. When he had 
got through, the Doctor looked him in the face steadily, as 
if he were saying, Is that all? 

The father’s eyes fell. This was not all. There was some- 
thing at the bottom of his soul which he could not bear to 
:speak of, — nay, which, as often as it reared itself through 
the dark waves of unworded consciousness into the breathing 
air of thought, he trod down as the ruined angels tread down 
a lost soul trying to come up out of the seething sea of tor- 
ture. Only this one daughter ! Ho ! God never would have 
ordained such a thing. There was nothing ever heard of 
like it; it could not be; she was ill, — she would outgrow 
all these singularities ; he had had an aunt who was peculiar ; 
he had heard that hysteric girls showed the strangest forms 
of moral obliquity for a time, but came right at last. She 
would change all at once, when her health got more firmly 
settled in the course of her growth. Are there not rough 
buds that open into sweet flowers? Are there not fruits, 
which, while unripe, are not to be tasted or endured, which 
mature into the richest taste and fragrance? In God’s good 
time she would come to her true nature; her eyes would 
lose that frightful, cold glitter; her lips would not feel so 
’Cold when she pressed them against his cheek ; and that faint 
birth-mark, her mother swooned when she first saw, would 


144 


ELSIE VENNER. 


fade wholly out, — it was less marked, surely, now than it: 
used to be! 

So Dudley Venner felt, and would have thought, if he 
had let his thoughts breathe the air of his soul. But the 
Doctor read through words and thoughts and all into the 
father’s consciousness. There are states of mind which may 
be shared by two persons in presence of each other, which 
remain not only unworded, but unthoughted, if such a word 
may be coined for our special need. Such a mutually inter- 
penetrative consciousness there was between the father and 
the old physician. By a common impulse, both of them rose 
in a mechanical way and went to the western window, where 
each started, as he saw the other’s look directed towards the 
white stone which stood in the midst of the small plot of 
green turf. 

The Doctor had, for a moment, forgotten himself, but he 
looked up at the clouds, which were angry, and said, as if 
speaking of the weather, “ It is dark now, but we hope it will 
clear up by-and-by. There are a great many more clouds 
than rains, and more rains than strokes of lightning, and 
more strokes of lightning than there are people killed. We 
must let this girl of ours have her way, as far as it is safe. 
Send away this woman she hates, quietly. Get her a for- 
eigner for a governess, if you can, — one that can dance and 
sing and will teach her. In the house old Sophy will watch 
her best. Out of it you must trust her, I am afraid, — for she 
will not be followed round, and she is in less danger than 
you think. If she wanders at night, find her, if you can ; the 
woods are not absolutely safe. If she will be friendly with 
any young people, have them to see her, — young men espe- 
cially. She will not love anyone easily, perhaps not at all; 
yet love would be more like to bring her right than anything 
else. If any young person seems in danger of falling in 
love with her, send him to me for counsel.” 

Dry, hard advice, but given from a kind heart, with a 
moist eye, and in tones which tried to be cheerful and were 
full of sympathy. This advice was the key to the more than 
indulgent treatment which, as we have seen, the girl had re- 
ceived from her father and all about her. The old Doctor 
often came in, in the kindest, most natural sort of way, got- 
into pleasant relations with Elsie by always treating her in 
the same easy manner as at the great party, encouraging all 


FAMILY SECRETS. 


145 


her harmless fancies, and rarely reminding her that he was 
a professional adviser, except when she came out of her own 
accord, as in the talk they had at the party, telling him of 
some wild trick she had been playing. 

“Let her go to the girls* school, by all means/* said the 
Doctor, when she had begun to talk about it. “ Possibly she 
may take to some of the girls or of the teachers. Anything 
to interest her. Friendship, love, religion, — whatever will 
set her nature at work. We must have headway on, or there 
will be no piloting her. Action first of all, and then we will 
see what to do with it.’* 

So, when Cousin Richard came along, the Doctor, though 
he did not like his looks any too well, told her father to 
encourage his staying for a time. If she liked him, it was 
good; if she only tolerated him, it was better than nothing. 

“ You know something about that nephew of yours, during 
these last years, I suppose ? ” the Doctor said. “ Looks as if 
he had seen life. Has a scar that was made by a sword-cut, 
and a white spot on the side of his neck that looks like a 
"bullet-mark. I think he has been what folks call a ‘ hard 
customer.* ’* 

Dudley Yenner owned that he had heard little or nothing 
-of him of late years. He had invited himself, and of course 
it would not be decent not to receive him as a relative. He 
thought Elsie rather liked having him about the house for 
a while. She was very capricious, — acted as if she fancied 
him one day and disliked him the next. He did not know, — 
but sometimes thought that this nephew of his might take 
a serious liking to Elsie. What should he do about it, if it 
turned out so? 

The Doctor lifted his eyebrows a little. He thought there 
was no fear. Elsie was naturally what they call a man- 
hater, and there was very little danger of any sudden passion 
springing up between two such young persons. Let him stay 
a while ; it gives her something to think about. So he stayed 
a while, as we have seen. 

The more Mr. Richard became acquainted with the family, 
— that is, with the two persons of whom it consisted, — the 
more favorably the idea of a permanent residence in the 
mansion-house seemed to impress him. The estate was large, 
— hundreds of acres, with woodlands and meadows of great 
value. The father and daughter had been living quietly, and : 


146 


ELSIE VENNER. 


there could not be a doubt that the property which came? 
through the Dudleys must have largely increased of late^ 
years. It was evident enough that they had an abundant in- 
come, from the way in which Elsie’s caprices were indulged- 
She had horses and carriages to suit herself; she sent to the 
great city for everything she wanted in the way of dress.. 
Even her diamonds — and the young man knew something 
about these gems — must be of considerable value ; and yet she 
wore them carelessly, as it pleased her fancy. She had pre- 
cious old laces, too, almost worth their weight in diamonds, — 
laces which had been snatched from altars in ancient Spanish 
cathedrals during the wars, and which it would not be safe 
to leave a duchess alone with for ten minutes. The old 
house was fat with the deposits of rich generations which, 
had gone before. The famous “ golden ” fire-set was a pur- 
chase of one of the family who had been in France during 
the Devolution, and must have come from a princely palace,, 
if not from one of the royal residences. As for silver, the 
iron closet which had been made in the dining-room wall 
was running over with it: tea-kettles, coffee-pots, heavy-lid- 
ded tankards, chafing-dishes, punch-bowls, all that all the 
Dudleys had ever used, from the caudje-cup which used to 
be handed round the young mother’s chamber, and the por- 
ringer from which children scooped their bread-and-milk 
with spoons as solid as ingots, to that ominous vessel, on the 
upper shelf, far back in the dark, with a spout like a slender 
italic S, out of which the sick and dying, all along the last 
century, and since, had taken the last drops that passed their 
lips. Without being much of a scholar, Dick could see well 
enough, too, that the books in the library had been ordered 
from the great London houses, whose imprint they bore, by 
persons who knew what was best and meant to have it. A 
man does not require much learning to feel pretty sure, when 
he takes one of those solid, smooth, velvet-leaved quartos, 
say a Baskerville Addison, for instance, bound in red mo- 
rocco, with a margin of gold as rich as the embroidery of a 
prince’s collar, as Vandyck drew it, — he need not know much 
to feel pretty sure that a score or two of shelves full of such 
books mean that it took a long purse, as well as a literary 
taste, to bring them together. 

To all these attractions the mind of this thoughtful young 
gentleman may be said to have been fully open. He did not 


FAMILY SECRETS. 


147 


-disguise from himself, however, that there were a number 
of drawbacks in the way of his becoming established as the 
heir of the Dudley mansion-house and fortune. In the first 
place, Cousin Elsie was, unquestionably, very piquant, very 
handsome, game as a hawk, and hard to please, which made 
her worth trying for. But then there was something about 
Cousin Elsie, — ’(the small, white scars began stinging, as 
he said this to himself, and he pushed his sleeve up to look 
at them,) — there was something about Cousin Elsie he 
couldn’t make out. What was the matter with her eyes, that 
they sucked your life out of you in that strange way ? What 
•did she always wear a necklace for? Had she some such 
love-token on her neck as the old Don’s revolver had left 
on his ? How safe would anybody feel to live with her ? Be- 
sides, her father would last forever, if he was left to himself. 
And he may take it into his head to marry again. That 
would be pleasant ! 

So talked Cousin Richard to himself, in the calm of the 
night and in the tranquillity of his own soul. There was 
much to be said on both sides. It was a balance to be struck 
after the two columns were added up. He struck the bal- 
ance, and came to the conclusion that he would fall in love 
with Elsie Venner. 

The intelligent reader will not confound this matured and 
;serious intention of falling in love with the young lady with 
that mere impulse of the moment before mentioned as an 
instance of making love. On the contrary, the moment Mr. 
Richard had made up his mind that he should fall in love 
with Elsie, he began to be more reserved with her, and try 
to make friends in other quarters. Sensible men, you know, 
care very little what a girl’s present fancy is. The question 
is: Who manages her, and how can you get at that person 
or those persons? Her foolish little sentiments are all very 
well in their way; but business is business, and we can’t 
stop for such trifles. The old political wire-pullers never go 
near the man they want to gain, if they can help it; they 
find out who his intimates and managers are, and work 
through them. Always handle any positively electrical body, 
whether it is charged with passion or power, with some non- 
-conductor between you and it, not with your naked hands. — 
The above were some of the young gentleman’s working 
^axioms ; and he proceeded to act in accordance with them. 


148 


ELSIE VENNER. 


He began by paying his court more assiduously to hiff. 
uncle. It was not very hard to ingratiate himself in that 
quarter; for his manners were insinuating, and his preco- 
cious experience of life made him entertaining. The old 
neglected billiard-room was soon put in order, and Dick, who 
was a magnificent player, had a series of games with his 
uncle, in which, singularly enough, he was beaten, though, 
his antagonist had been out of play for years. He evinced 
a profound interest in the family history, insisted on having 
the details of its early alliances, and professed a great pride 
in it, which he had inherited from his father, who, though 
he had allied himself with the daughter of an alien race, 
had yet chosen one with the real azure blood in her veins,, 
as proud as if she had Castile and Aragon for her dower and 
the Cid for her grandpapa. He also asked a great deal of 
advice, such as inexperienced young persons are in need of,., 
and listened to it with due reverence. 

It is not very strange that Uncle Dudley took a kinder 
view of his nephew than the Judge, who thought he could 
read a questionable history in his face, — or the old Doctor,, 
who knew men’s temperaments and organizations pretty well, 
and had his prejudices about races, and could tell an old 
sword-cut and a bullet-mark in two seconds from a scar got 
by falling against the fender, or a mark left by king’s evil. 
He could not be expected to share our own prejudices; for 
he had heard nothing of the wild youth’s adventures, or- 
his scamper over the Pampas at short notice. So, then,, 
“ Richard Vernier, Esquire, guest of Dudley Venner, 
Esquire, at his elegant mansion,” prolonged his visit until 
his presence became something like a matter of habit, and 
the neighbors began to think that the fine old house would 
be illuminated before long for a grand marriage. 

He had done pretty well with the father: the next thing 
was to gain over the nurse. Old Sophy was as cunning as 
a red fox or a gray woodchuck. She had nothing in the 
world to do but to watch Elsie; she had nothing to care for 
but this girl and her father. She had never liked Dick too- 
well; for he used to make faces at her and tease her when he 
was a boy, and now he was a man there was something about 
him — she could not tell what — that made her suspicious of 
him. It was no small matter to get her over to his side. 

The jet-black Africans know that gold never looks so well 


FAMILY SECRETS. 


149 


^as on the foil of their dark skins. Dick found in his trunk 
a string of gold beads, such as are manufactured in some of 
our cities, which he had brought from the gold region of 
Chili, — so he said, — for the express purpose of giving them 
to old Sophy. These Africans, too, have a perfect passion 
for gay-colored clothing: being condemned by Nature, as 
it were, to a perpetual mourning-suit, they love to enliven 
it with all sorts of variegated stuffs of sprightly patterns, 
aflame with red and yellow. The considerate young man 
had remembered this, too, and brought home for Sophy some 
handkerchiefs of rainbow hues, which had been strangely 
overlooked till now, at the bottom of one of his trunks. Old 
Sophy took his gifts, but kept her black eyes open and 
matched every movement of the young people all the more 
closely. It was through her that the father had always 
hnown most of the actions and tendencies of his daughter. 

In the meantime the strange adventure on The Mountain 
had brought the young master into new relations with Elsie. 
She had led him out of danger; perhaps saved him from 
death by the strange power she exerted. He was grateful, 
and -yet shuddered at the recollection of the whole scene. 
In his dreams he was pursued by the glare of cold, glittering 
eyes, — whether they were in the head of a woman or of a 
reptile he could not always tell, the images had so run to- 
gether. But he could not help seeing that the eyes of the 
young girl had been often, very often, turned upon him 
when he had been looking away, and fell as his own glance 
met them. Helen Darley told him very plainly that this 
girl was thinking about him more than about her book. 
Dick Venner found she was getting more constant in her 
attendance at school. He learned, on inquiry, that there was 
a new master, a handsome young man. The handsome young 
man would not have liked the look that came over Dick’s 
face when he heard this fact mentioned. 

In short, everything was getting tangled up together, and 
there would be no chance of disentangling the threads in 
this chapter. 


CHAPTER XV. 


PHYSIOLOGICAL. 

If Master Bernard felt a natural gratitude to his young 
pupil from saving him from an imminent peril, he was in a 
state of infinite perplexity to know why he should have 
needed much aid. He, an active, muscular, courageous, ad- 
venturous young fellow, with a stick in his hand, ready to* 
hold down the Old Serpent himself, if he had come in his- 
way, to stand still, staring into those two eyes until thejr 
came up close to him, and the strange, terrible sound 
seemed to freeze him stiff where he stood, — what was the 
meaning of it? Again, what was the influence this girl had 
seemingly exerted, under which the venomous creature had 
collapsed in such a sudden way ? Whether he had been awake 
or dreaming, he did not feel quite sure. He knew he had 
gone up The Mountain, at any rate ; he knew he had come 
down The Mountain with the girl walking just before him; — 
there was no forgetting her figure as she walked on in silence,, 
her braided locks falling a little, for want of the lost hair-pin,, 
perhaps, and looking like a wreathing coil of 

Shame on such fancies ! — to wrong that supreme crowning 
gift of abounding Nature, a rush of shining black hair,, 
which, shaken loose, would cloud her all round, like Godiva, 
from brow to instep ! He was sure he had sat down before the 
fissure or cave. He was sure that he was led softly away 
from the place, and that it was Elsie who had led him. There 
was the hair-pin to show that so far it was not a dream. But 
between these recollections came a strange confusion; and 
the more the master thought, the more he was perplexed to 
know whether she had waked him, -sleeping, as he sat on the 
stone, from some frightful dream, such as may come in a very 
brief slumber, or whether she had bewitched him into a trance 
with those strange eyes of hers, or whether it was all true,, 
and he must solve its problem as he best might. 

There was another recollection connected with this moun- 
tain adventure. As they approached the mansion-house, they 


150 


PHYSIOLOGICAL. 


151 


met a young man, whom Mr. Bernard remembered having: 
seen once at least before, and whom he had heard of as a 
cousin of the young girl. As Cousin Richard Venner, the 
person in question, passed them, he took the measure, so to* 
speak, of Mr. Bernard, with a look so piercing, so exhausting,, 
so practiced, so profoundly suspicious, that the young master 
felt in an instant that he had an enemy in this handsome 
youth, — an enemy, too, who was like to be subtle and dan- 
gerous. 

Mr. Bernard had made up his mind that, come what might,, 
enemy or no enemy, live or die, he would solve the mystery of 
Elsie Venner, sooner or later. He was not a man to be 
frightened out of his resolution by a scowl, or a stiletto, or 
any unknown means of mischief, of which a whole armory 
was hinted at in that passing look Dick Venner had given 
him. Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found 
a kind of charm in feeling that there might be some dangers 
in the way of his investigations. Some rumors which had 
reached him about the supposed suitor of Elsie Venner, who 
was thought to be a desperate kind of fellow, and whom some 
believed to be an unscrupulous adventurer, added a curious, 
romantic kind of interest to the course of physiological and 
psychological inquiries he was about instituting. 

The afternoon on The Mountain was still uppermost in 
his mind. Of course he knew the common stories about fas- 
cination. He had once been himself an eye-witness of the 
charming of a small bird by one of our common harmless- 
serpents. Whether a human being could be reached by this 
subtile agency, he had been skeptical, notwithstanding the 
mysterious relation generally felt to exist between man and 
this creature, “ cursed above all cattle and above every beast 
of the field,” — a relation which some interpret as the fruitr 
of the curse, and others hold to be so instinctive that this, 
animal has been for that reason adopted as the natural sym- 
bol of evil. There was another solution, however, supplied 
him by his professional reading. The curious work of Mr., 
Braid of Manchester had made him familiar with the phe- 
nomena of a state allied to that produced by animal mag- 
netism, and called by that writer by the name of hypnotism.. 
He found, by referring to his note-book, the statement was,, 
that, by fixing the eyes on a bright object so placed as to- 
produce a strain upon the eyes and eyelids, and to main- 


152 


ELSIE VENNER. 


tain a steady fixed stare, there comes on in a few seconds 
a very singular condition, characterized by muscular rigidity 
and inability to move, with a strange exaltation of most of 
the senses, and generally a closure of the eyelids, — this con- 
dition being followed by torpor. 

Now this statement of Mr. Braid’s, well known to the 
scientific world, and the truth of which had been confirmed 
by Mr. Bernard in certain experiments he had instituted, 
as it has been by many other experimenters, went far to ex- 
plain the strange impressions, of which, waking or dreaming, 
he had certainly being the subject. His nervous system had 
been in a high state of exaltation at the time. He remem- 
bered how the little noises that made rings of sound in the 
silence of the woods, like pebbles dropped in still waters, had 
reached his inner consciousness. He remembered that singu- 
lar sensation in the roots of the hair, when he came on the 
traces of the girl’s presence, reminding him of a line in a 
certain poem which he had read lately with a new and pe- 
culiar interest. He even recalled a curious evidence of ex- 
alted sensibility and irritability, in the twitching of the 
minute muscles of the internal ear at every unexpected sound, 
producing an odd little snap in the middle of the head, which 
proved to him that he was getting very nervous. 

The next thing was to find out whether it were possible 
that the venomous creature’s eyes should have served the 
purpose of Mr. Braid’s “ bright object ” held very close to the 
.person experimented on, or whether they had any special 
power which could be made the subject of exact observation. 

For this purpose Mr. Bernard considered it necessary to get 
a live crotalus or two into his possession, if this were possible. 
On inquiry, he found that there was a certain family living 
far up the mountain side, not a mile from the ledge, the 
members of which were said to have taken these creatures oc- 
casionally, and not to be in any danger, or, at least, in any fear 
of being injured by them. He applied to these people, and 
offered a reward sufficient to set them at work to capture 
some of these animals, if such a thing were possible. 

A few days after this, a dark, gypsy-looking woman pre- 
sented herself at his door. She held up her apron as if it 
contained something precious in the bag she made with it. 

“ Y’ wanted some rattlers,” said the woman. “ Here they 
be.” 


PHYSIOLOGICAL. 


15£ 

She opened her apron and showed a coil of rattlesnakes 
lying very peaceably in its fold. They lifted their heads up,, 
as if they wanted to see what was going on, but showed no- 
sign of anger. 

“Are you crazy?” said Mr. Bernard. “You’re dead in 
an hour, if one of those creatures strikes you ! ” 

He drew back a little as he spoke; it might be simple dis- 
gust; it might be fear; it might be what we call antipathy, 
which is different from either, and which will sometimes show 
itself in paleness, and even faintness, produced by objects, 
perfectly harmless and not in themselves offensive to any 
sense. 

“ Lord bless you,” said the woman, “ rattlers never touches 
our folks. I’d jest ’z lieves handle them creaturs as so many 
striped snakes.” 

So saying, she put their heads down with her hand, and 
packed them together in her apron as if they had been bits^ 
of cart-rope. 

Mr. Bernard had never heard of the power, or, at least, the- 
belief in the possession of a power by certain persons, which 
enables them to handle these frightful reptiles with perfect 
impunity. The fact, however, is well known to others, and 
more especially to a very distinguished professor in one of 
the leading institutions of the great city of the land, whose 
experiences in the neighborhood of Graylock, as he will 
doubtless inform the curious, were very much like those of 
the young master. 

Mr. Bernard had a wired cage ready for his formidable cap- 
tives, and studied their habits and expression with a strange- 
sort of interest. What did the Creator mean to signify, when 
he made such shapes of horror, and, as if he had doubly cursed 
this envenomed wretch, had set a mark upon him and sent 
him forth, the Cain of the brotherhood of serpents? It was 
a very curious fact that the first train of thoughts Mr. Ber- 
nard’s small menagerie suggested to him was the grave, 
though somewhat worn, subject of the origin of evil. There 
is now to be seen in a tall glass jar, in the Museum of Com- 
parative Anatomy at Cantabridge, in the territory of the Mas- 
sachusetts, a huge crotalus, of a species which grows to more 
frightful dimensions than our own, under the hotter skies of 
South America. Look at it, ye who would know what is the- 
tolerance, the freedom from prejudice, which can suffer such? 


154 


ELSIE VEKNER. 


.an incarnation of all that is devilish to lie unharmed in the 
-cradle of Nature! Learn, too, that there are many things in 
this world which we are warned to shun, and are even suffered 
to slay, if need be, but which we must not hate, unless we 
would hate what God loves and cares for. 

Whatever fascination the creature might exercise in his 
native haunts, Mr. Bernard found himself not in the least 
nervous or affected in any way while looking at his caged 
reptiles. When their cage was shaken, they would lift their 
Leads and spring their rattles; but the sound was by no 
means so formidable to listen to as when it reverberated 
among the chasms of the echoing rocks. The expression of 
the creatures was watchful, still, grave, passionless, fate-like, 
^suggesting a cold malignity which seemed to be waiting for 
its opportunity. Their awful, deep-cut mouths were sternly 
closed over the long hollow fangs, which rested their roots 
against the swollen poison gland, where the venom had been 
hoarding up ever since the last stroke had emptied it. They 
never winked, for ophidians have no movable eyelids, but 
kept up that awful fixed stare which made the two unwinking 
gladiators the survivors of twenty pairs matched by one of 
the Roman Emperors, as Pliny tells us, in his “ Natural His- 
tory.” Their eyes did not flash, but shone with a cold, still 
light. They were of a pale golden or straw color, horrible to 
look into, with their stony calmness, their pitiless indiffer- 
ence, hardly enlivened by the almost imperceptible vertical slit 
of the pupil, through which Death seemed to be looking out 
like the archer behind the long narrow loophole in a blank 
turret wall. On the whole, the caged reptiles, horrid as they 
were, hardly matched his recollections of what he had seen or 
-dreamed he saw at the cavern. These looked dangerous 
enough, but yet quiet. A treacherous stillness, however, — as 
the unfortunate New York physician found, when he put his 
foot out to wake up the torpid creature, and instantly the fang 
flashed through his boot, carrying the poison into his blood, 
and death with it. 

-Mr. Bernard kept these strange creatures, and watched all 
iheir habits with a natural curiosity. In any collection of ani- 
mals the venomous beasts are looked at with the greatest in- 
terest, just as the greatest villains are most run after by the 
unknown public. Nobody troubles himself for a common 
striped snake or a petty thief, but a cobra or a wife-killer is a 


PHYSIOLOGICAL. 


155 

center of attraction to all eyes. These captives did very little 
to earn their living, but, on the other hand, their living was 
not expensive, their diet being nothing but air, au naturel. 
Months and months these creatures will live and seem to 
thrive well enough, as any showman who has them in his 
menagerie will testify, though they never touch anything to 
eat or drink. 

In the meantime Mr. Bernard had become very curious 
about a class of subjects not treated of in detail in those text- 
books accessible in most country towns, to the exclusion of 
the more special treatises, and especially of the rare and 
ancient works found on the shelves of the larger city libraries. 
He was on a visit to old Dr. Kittredge one day, having been 
asked by him to call in for a few moments as soon as con- 
venient. The Doctor smiled good-humoredly when he asked 
him if he had an extensive collection of medical works. 

“ Why, no,” said the old Doctor, “ I haven’t got a great many 
printed books; and what I have I don’t read quite as often as 
I might, I’m afraid. I read and studied in the time of it,, 
when I was in the midst of the young men who were all at 
work with their books; but it’s a mighty hard matter, when, 
you go off alone into the country, to keep up with all that’s 
going on in the Societies and Colleges. I’ll tell you, though,, 
Mr. Langdon, when a man that’s once started right lives- 
among sick folks for five-and-thirty years, as I’ve done, if he- 
hasn’t got a library of five-and-thirty volumes bound up in his 
head at the end of that time, he’d better stop driving round 
and sell his horse and sulky. I know the bigger part of the 
families within a dozen miles’ ride. I know the families that 
have a way of living through everything, and I know the 
other set that have the trick of dying without any kind of rea- 
son for it. I know the years when the fevers and dysenteries 
are in earnest, and when they’re only making believe. I 
know the folks that think they’re dying as soon as they’re 
sick, and the folks that never find out they’re sick till they’re 
dead. I don’t want to undervalue your science, Mr. Langdon. 
There are things I never learned because they came in after 
my day, and I am very glad to send my patients to those that 
do know them, when I am at fault ; but I know these people 
about here, fathers and mothers, and children and grandchil- 
dren, so as all the science in the world can’t know them, with- 
out it takes time about it, and sees them grow up and grow 


ELSIE VENNER. 


156 

-old, and how the wear and tear of life comes to them. You 
-can’t tell a horse by driving him once, Mr. Langdon, nor a 
patient by talking half an hour with him.” 

“ Do you know much about the Venner family? ” said Mr. 
Bernard, in a natural way enough, the Doctor’s talk having 
suggested the question. 

The Doctor lifted his head with his accustomed move- 
ment, so as to command the young man through his spec- 
tacles. 

“ I know all the families of this place and its neighbor- 
hood,” he answered. 

“ We have the young lady studying with us at the Insti- 
tute,” said Mr. Bernard. 

“ I know it,” the Doctor answered. “ Is she a good 
scholar ? ” 

All this time the Doctor’s eyes were fixed steadily on Mr. 
.Bernard, looking through the glasses. 

“ She is a good scholar enough, but I don’t know what to 
make of her. Sometimes I think she is a little out of her 
head. Her father, I believe, is sensible enough; — -what sort 
•of a woman was her mother, Doctor? — I suppose of course, 
you remember all about her ? ” 

“ Yes, I knew her mother. She was a very lovely young 
woman.” The Doctor put his hand to his forehead and drew 
a long breath. “ What is there you notice out of the way 
with Elsie Venner?” 

“ A good many things,” the master answered. u She shuns 
all the other girls. She is getting a strange influence over 
my fellow-teacher, a young lady, — you know Miss Helen Dar- 
ley, perhaps? I am afraid this girl will kill her. I never saw 
or heard of anything like it, in prose at least; — do you re- 
member much of Coleridge’s Poems, Doctor ? ” 

The good old Doctor had to plead a negative. 

“ Well, no matter. Elsie would have been burned for a 
witch in old times. I have seen the girl look at Miss Darley 
when she had not the least idea of it, and all at once I would 
see her grow pale and moist, and sigh and move round un- 
easily, and turn towards Elsie, and perhaps get up and go to 
her, or else have slight spasmodic movements that looked 
like hysterics ; — do you believe in the evil eye, Doctor ? ” 

“ Mr. Langdon,” the Doctor said solemnly, “ there are 
^strange things about Elsie Venner, — very strange things. 


PHYSIOLOGICAL. 


157 


This was what I wanted to speak to you about. Let me ad- 
vise you all to be very patient with the girl, but also very 
careful. Her love is not to be desired, and ” — he spoke in a 
lower tone — “her hate is to be dreaded. Do you think she 
has any special fancy for anybody else in the school besides 
Miss Darley ? ” 

Mr. Bernard could not stand the old Doctor’s spectacled 
eyes without betraying a little of the feeling natural to a 
young man to whom a home question involving a possible 
sentiment is put suddenly. 

“ I have suspected,” he said, — “ I have had a kind of feel- 
ing — that she Well, come, Doctor, — I don’t know that 

there’s any use in disguising the matter, — I have thought 
Elsie Venner had rather a fancy for somebody else, — I mean 
myself.” 

There was something so becoming in the blush with which' 
the young man made this confession, and so manly, too, in the 
tone with which he spoke, so remote from any hollow vanity, 
such as young men who are incapable of love are apt to feel,, 
when some loose tendril of a woman’s fancy which a chance 
wind has blown against them twines about them for the want 
of anything better, that the old Doctor looked at him ad- 
miringly, and could not help thinking that it was no wonder 
any young girl should be pleased with him. 

“You are a man of nerve, Mr. Langdon,” said the Doctor.. 

“ I thought so till very lately,” he replied. “ I am not 
easily frightened, but I don’t know but I might be bewitched 
or magnetized, or whatever it is when one is tied up and can- 
not move. I think I can find nerve enough, however, if there 
is any special use you want to put it to.” 

“ Let me ask you one more question, Mr. Langdon. Do you 
find yourself disposed to take a special interest in Elsie, — to 
fall in love with her, in a word ? Pardon me, for I do not ask 
from curiosity, but a much more serious motive,” 

“Elsie interests me,” said the young man, “interests me 
strangely. She is a wild flower in her character, which is 
wholly different from that of any human creature I ever 
saw. She has marks of genius, — poetic or dramatic, — I 
hardly know which. She read a passage from Keats’ ‘ Lamia * 
the other day, in the schoolroom, in such a way that I de- 
clare to you I thought some of the girls would faint or go into 
fits. Miss Darley got up and left the room, trembling all 


158 


ELSIE VENNER. 


^ver. Then I pity her. She is so lonely. The girls are 
-afraid of her, and she seems to have either a dislike or a fear 
•of them. They have all sorts of painful stories about her. 
They give her a name which no human creature ought to 
bear. They say she hides a mark on her neck by always 
wearing a necklace. She is very graceful, you know, and 
they will have it that she can twist herself into all sorts of 
shapes, or tie herself in a knot if she wants to. There is not 
one of them that will look her in the eyes. I pity the poor 
girl; but, Doctor, I do not love her. I would risk my life 
for her, if it would do her any good, but it would be in cold 
blood. If her hand touches mine, it is not a thrill of passion 
I feel running through me, but a very different emotion. Oh, 
Doctor! there must be something in that creature’s blood 
which has killed the humanity in her. God only knows the 
-cause that has blighted such a soul in so beautiful a body! 
No, Doctor, I do not love the girl.” 

“ Mr. Langdon,” said the Doctor, “ you are young, and I 
nm old. Let me talk to you with an old man’s privilege, as 
an adviser. You have come to this country town without 
suspicion, and you are moving in the midst of perils. There 
are things which I must not tell you now; but I may warn 
you. Keep your eyes open and your heart shut. If, through 
pitying that girl, you ever come to love her, you are lost. If 
.you deal carelessly with her, beware ! This is not all. There are 
other eyes on you besides Elsie Venner’s. Do you go armed? ” 

“ I do,” said Mr. Bernard, — and he “ put his hands up ” in 
the shape of fists in such a way as to show that he was master 
•of the natural weapons, at any rate. 

The Doctor could not help smiling. But his face fell in an 
instant. 

“ You may want something more than those tools to work 
with. Come with me into my sanctum.” 

The Doctor led Mr. Bernard into a small room opening out 
-of the study. It was a place such as anybody but a medical 
man would shiver to enter. There was the usual tall box, 
with its bleached, rattling tenant; there were jars in rows, 
where “ interesting cases ” outlived the grief of widows and 
heirs in alcoholic immortality, — for your “ preparation- jar ” 
is the true “ monumentum sere perennius ” ; there were various 
.semipossibilities of minute dimensions and unpromising de- 
velopments; there were shining instruments of evil aspect, 


PHYSIOLOGICAL. 


159 


and grim plates on the walls, and on one shelf, by itself, 
accursed and apart, coiled in a long cylinder of spirit, a 
huge crotalus, rough-scaled, flat-headed, variegated with dull 
hands, one of which partially encircled the neck like a col- 
lar, — an awful wretch to look upon, with murder written all 
over him in horrid hieroglyphics. Mr. Bernard’s look was 
riveted on this creature, — not fascinated certainly, for its 
■eyes looked like white beads, being clouded by the action of 
the spirits in which it had been long kept, — but fixed by some 
indefinite sense of the renewal of a previous impression; — 
everybody knows the feeling, with its suggestion of some past 
state of existence. There was a scrap of paper on the jar, 
with something written on it. He was reaching up to read it, 
when the Doctor touched him lightly. 

“ Look here, Mr. Langdon ! ” he said, with a certain vivacity 
of manner, as if wishing to call away his attention, — “ this is 
my armory.” 

The Doctor threw open the door of a small cabinet, where 
were disposed in artistic patterns various weapons of offense 
and defense, — for he was a virtuoso in his way, and by 
the side of the implements of the art of healing had pleased 
Limself with displaying a collection of those other instru- 
ments, the use of which renders the first necessary. 

“ See which of these weapons you would like best to carry 
about you,” said the Doctor. 

Mr. Bernard laughed, and looked at the Doctor as if he 
had doubted whether he was in earnest. 

“ This 'looks dangerous enough,” he said, — “ for the man 
who carries it, at least.” 

He took down one of the prohibited Spanish daggers, or 
knives, which a traveler may occasionally get hold of and 
smuggle out of the country. The blade was broad, trowel- 
like, but the point drawn out several inches so as to look 
like a skewer. 

“ This must be a jealous bull-fighter’s weapon,” he said, 
and put it back in its place. 

Then he took down an ancient-looking broad-bladed dag- 
ger, with a complex aspect about it, as if it had some kind 
of mechanism connected with it. 

“ Take care!” said the Doctor; “ there is a trick to that 
dagger.” 

4 He took it and touched a spring. The dagger split sud- 


160 


ELSIE VENNER. 


denly into three blades, as when one separates the forefinger 
and the ring finger from the middle one. The outside blades 
were sharp on the outer edge. The stab was to be made with, 
the dagger shut, then the spring touched and the split blades 
withdrawn. 

Mr. Bernard replaced it, saying that it would have served 
for a side-arm to old Suwarrow, who told his men to work 
their bayonets back and forward when they pinned a Turk, 
but to wriggle them about in the wound when they stabbed, 
a Frenchman. 

“ Here,” said the Doctor, “ this is the thing you want.” 

He took down a much more modern and familiar imple- 
ment — a small, beautifully finished revolver. 

“ I want you to carry this,” he said, “ and more than that,. 
I want you to practice with it often, as for amusement, but 
so that it may be seen and understood that you are apt to 
have a pistol with you. Pistol-shooting is pleasant sport 
enough, and there is no reason why you should not practice 
it like other young fellows. And, now,” the Doctor said, “ T 
have one other weapon to give you.” 

He took a small piece of parchment and shook a whiter 
powder into it from one of his medicine jars. The jar was. 
marked with the name of a mineral salt, of a nature to have 
been serviceable in case of sudden illness in the time of the 
Borgias. The Doctor folded the parchment carefully and 
marked the Latin name of the powder upon it. 

“ Here,” he said, handing it to Mr. Bernard, — “ you see 
what it is, and you know what service it can render. Keep 
these two protectors about your person day and night; they 
will not harm you, and you may want one or the other or 
both before you think of it.” 

Mr. Bernard thought it was very odd, and not very old- 
gentlemanlike, to be fitting him out for treason, stratagem, 
and spoils, in this way. There was no harm, however, in- 
carrying a doctor’s powder in his pocket, or in amusing him- 
self with shooting at a mark, as he had often done before. If 
the old gentleman had these fancies, it was as well to humor 
him So he thanked old Doctor Kittredge, and shook his 
hand warmly as he left him. 

“ The fellow’s hand did not tremble, nor his color change, n 
the Doctor said, as he watched him walking away. “ He is; 
one of the right sort.” 


CHAPTEK XVI. 


EPISTOLARY. 

Mr. Langdon to the Professor. 

My Dear Professor, — 

You were kind enough to promise me that you would assist 
me in any professional or scientific investigations in which I 
might become engaged. I have of late become. deeply inter- 
ested in a class of subjects which present peculiar difficulty, 
and I must exercise the privilege of questioning you on some 
points upon which I desire information I cannot otherwise ob- 
tain. I would not trouble you, if I could find any person or 
books competent to enlighten me on some of these singular 
matters which have so excited me. The leading doctor here 
is a shrewd, sensible man, but not versed in the curiosities of 
medical literature. 

I proceed with your leave, to ask a considerable number 
of questions, — hoping to get answers to some of them, at 
least. 

Is there any evidence that human beings can be infected 
or wrought upon by poisons, or otherwise, so that they shall 
manifest any of the peculiarities belonging to beings of a 
lower nature? Can such peculiarities be transmitted by in- 
heritance? Is there anything to countenance the stories, 
long and widely current, about the “ evil eye ” ? or is it a mere 
fancy that such a power belongs to any human being ? Have 
you any personal experience as to the power of fascination 
said to be exercised by certain animals ? What can you make 
of those circumstantial statements we have seen in the papers 
<of children forming mysterious friendships with ophidians 
of different species, sharing their food with them, and seeming 
to be under some subtile influence exercised by those crea- 
tures? Have you read, critically, Coleridge’s poem of 
« Christabel,” and Keat’s “Lamia”? If so, can you under- 
stand them, or find any physiological foundation for the 
.atory of either? 


161 


162 


ELSIE VENNER. 


There is another set of questions of a different nature I 
should like to ask, but it is hardly fair to put so many on a 
single sheet. There is one, however, you must answer. Da 
you think there may be predispositions, inherited or in- 
grafted, but at any rate constitutional, which shall take out 
certain apparently voluntary determinations from the con- 
trol of the will, and leave them as free from moral responsi- 
bility as the instincts of the lower animals ? Do you not think 
there may be a crime which is not a sin ? 

Pardon me, my dear sir, for troubling you with such a list 
of notes of interrogation. There are some very strange things- 
going on here in this place, country town as it is. Country 
life is apt to be dull; but when it once gets going it beats the 
city hollow because it gives its whole mind to what it is- 
about. These rural sinners make terrible work with the mid- 
dle of the Decalogue, when they get started. However, I hope 
I shall live through my year’s school-keeping without catas- 
trophes, though there are queer doings about me which puzzle 
me and might scare some people. If anything should hap- 
pen, you will be one of the first to hear of it, no doubt. But 
I trust not to help out the editors of the “ Kockland Weekly- 
Universe ” with an obituary of the late lamented, who signed 
himself in life 

Your friend and pupil, 

Bernard C. Langdon. 

The ' Professor to Mr. Langdon. 

My Dear Mr. Langdon, — 

I do not wonder that you find no answer from your country- 
friends to the curious questions you put. They belong to that 
middle region between science and poetry which sensible men, 
as they are called, are very shy of meddling with. Some peo- 
ple think that truth and gold are always to be washed for; 
but the wiser sort are of opinion, that, unless there are so 
many grains to the peck of sand or nonsense respectively, it 
does not pay to wash for either, so long as one can find any- 
thing else to do. I don’t doubt there is some truth in the* 
phenomena of animal magnetism, for instance ; but when you 
ask me to cradle for it, I tell you that the hysteric girls cheat 
so, and the professionals are such a set of pickpockets, that 
I can do something better than hunt for the grains of truth 


EPISTOLARY. 


163 


among their tricks and lies. Do you remember what I used 
to say in my lectures? — or were you asleep just then, or cut- 
ting your initials on the rail ? (You see I can ask questions, 
my young friend.) Leverage is everything, — was what I 
used to say; — don’t begin to pry till you have got the long 
arm on your side. 

To please you, and satisfy your doubts as far as possible, 
I have looked into the old books, — into Schenckius and 
Turner and Kenelm Digby and the rest, where I have found 
plenty of curious stories which you must take for what they 
are worth. 

Your first question I can answer in the affirmative upon 
pretty good authority. Mizaldus tells, in his “ Memorabilia,” 
the well-known story of the girl fed on poisons, who was sent 
.by the king of the Indies to Alexander the Great. “ When 
Aristotle saw her eyes sparkling and snapping like those of 
serpents, he said, ‘ Look out for yourself, Alexander ! this is 
a dangerous companion for you ! ’ ” — and sure enough, the 
young lady proved to be a very unsafe person to her friends. 
Cardanus gets a story from Avicenna, of a certain man bit 
by a serpent, who recovered of his bite, the snake dying there- 
from. This man afterwards had a daughter whom venomous 
serpents could not harm, though she had a fatal power over 
them. 

I suppose you may remember the statements of old authors 
about lycanthropy, the disease in which men took on the 
nature and aspects of wolves. Aetius and Paulus, both men 
of authority, describe it. Altomaris gives a horrid case; and 
Kincelius mentions one occurring as late as 1541, the subject 
of which was captured, still insisting that he was a wolf, only 
that the hair of his hide was turned in! Versipelles, it may 
be remembered, was the Latin name for these “ were-wolves.” 

As for the cases where rabid persons have barked and bit 
like dogs, there are plenty of such on record. 

More singular, or at least more rare, is the account given 
by Andreas Baccius, of a man who was struck in the hand 
by a cock, with his beak, and who died on the third day 
thereafter, looking for all the world like a fighting-cock, to the 
great horror of the spectators. 

As to impressions transmitted at a very early period of 
existence, everyone knows the story of King James’s fear of a 
naked sword, and the way it is accounted for. Sir Kenelm 


164 


ELSIE VENNER. 


Digby says, — “ I remember when he dubbed me Knight, in 
the ceremony of putting the point of a naked sword upon my 
shoulder, he could not endure to look upon it, but turned his 
face another way, insomuch, that, in lieu of touching my 
shoulder, he had almost thrust the point into my eyes, had not 
the Duke of Buckingham guided his hand aright.” It is he, 
too, who tells the story of the mulberry mark upon the neck of 
a certain lady of high condition, which “ every year, in mul- 
berry season, did swell, grow big, and itch.” And Gaffarel 
mentions the case of a girl born with the figure of a fish on 
one of her limbs, of which the wonder was, that, when the 
girl did eat fish, this mark put her to sensible pain. But 
there is no end to cases of this kind, and I could give some 
of recent date, if necessary, lending a certain plausibility at 
least to the doctrine of transmitted impressions. 

I never saw a distinct case of evil eye, though I have seen 
eyes so bad that they might produce strange effects on very 
sensitive natures. But the belief in it under various names,, 
fascination, jettatura, etc., is so permanent and universal,, 
from Egypt to Italy, and from the days of Solomon to those 
of Ferdinand of Naples, that there must be some peculiarity, 
to say the least, on which the opinion is based. There is very 
strong evidence that some such power is exercised by certain 
of the lower animals. Thus, it is stated on good authority 
that “ almost every animal becomes panic-struck at the sight 
of the rattlesnake, and seems at once deprived of the power 
of motion, or the exercise of its usual instinct of self-preserva- 
tion.” Other serpents seem to share this power of fascina- 
tion, as the Cobra and the Bucephalus Capensis. Some think 
that it is nothing but fright ; others attribute it to the 

“ strange powers that lie 
Within the magic circle of the eye,” — 

as Churchill said, speaking of Garrick. 

You ask me about those mysterious and frightful in- 
timacies between children and serpents, of which so many 
instances have been recorded. I am sure I cannot tell what 
to make of them. I have seen several such accounts in 
recent papers, but here is one published in the seventeenth 
century, which is as striking as any of the more modern 
ones : — 

“Mr. Herbert Jones of Monmouth, when he was a little 


EPISTOLARY. 


165 

IBoy, was used to eat his Milk in a Garden in the Morning, 
and was no sooner there, but a large Snake always came, and 
eat out of the Dish with him, and did so for a considerable 
time, till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the Head, 
it hissed at him. Upon which he told his Mother that the 
Baby (for so he call’d it) cry’d Hiss at him. His Mother had 
it kill’d, which occasioned him a great Fit of Sickness, and 
”twas thought would have dy’d, but did recover.” 

There was likewise one “ William Writtle, condemned at 
Maidston Assizes for a double murder, told a Minister that 
was with him after he was condemned, that his mother told 
him, that when he was a Child, there crept always to him a 
Snake, wherever she laid him. Sometimes she would convey 
him up Stairs, and leave him never so little, she should be 
sure to find a Snake in the Cradle with him, but never per- 
ceived it did him any harm.” 

One of the most striking alleged facts connected with the 
mysterious relation existing between the serpent and the 
human species is the influence which the poison of the 
Crotalus, taken internally, seemed to produce over the moral 
faculties, in the experiments instituted by Dr. Hering at 
Surinam. There is something frightful in the disposition 
of certain ophidians, as the whip-snake, which darts at the 
.eyes of cattle without any apparent provocation or other 
motive. It is natural enough that the evil principle should 
have been represented in the form of a serpent, but it is 
strange to think of introducing it into a human being like 
cox-pox by vaccination. 

You know all about the Psylli, or ancient serpent-tamers, 
T suppose. Savary gives an account of the modern serpent- 
tamers in his “ Letters on Egypt.” These modern jugglers 
are in the habit of making the venomous Naja counterfeit 
death, lying out straight and stiff, changing it into a rod, 
•as the ancient magicians did with their serpents, (probably 
the same animal,) in the time of Moses. 

I am afraid I cannot throw much light on u Christabel ” 

• or “ Lamia ” by any criticism I can offer. Geraldine, in the 
former, seems to be simply a malignant witch-woman with the 
-evil eye, but with no absolute ophidian relationship. Lamia 
is a serpent transformed by magic into a woman. The idea 
of both is mythological, and not in any sense physiological. 
••Some women unquestionably suggest the image of serpents; 


166 


ELSIE VENNER. 


men rarely or never. I have been struck, like many' others* 
with the ophidian head and eye of the famous Rachel. 

Your question about inherited predispositions, as limiting 
the sphere of the will, and, consequently, of moral account- 
ability, opens a very wide range of speculation. I can give- 
you only a brief abstract of my own opinions on this delicate 
and difficult subject. Crime and sin, being the preserves of 
two great organized interests, have been guarded against all 
reforming poachers with as great jealousy as the Royal 
Forests. It is so easy to hang a troublesome fellow! It is so- 
much simpler to consign a soul to perdition, or say masses, 
for money, to save it, than to take the blame on ourselves for 
letting it grow up in neglect and run to ruin for want of hu- 
manizing influences ! They hung poor, crazy Bellingham for 
shooting Mr. Perceval. The ordinary of Newgate preached to 
women who were to swing at Tyburn for a petty theft as if 
they were worse than other people, — just as though he would 
not have been a pickpocket or shoplifter, himself, if he had 
been born in a den of thieves and bred up to steal or starve ! 
The English law never began to get hold of the idea that a 
crime was not necessarily a sin, till Hadfield, who thought he 
was the Saviour of mankind, was tried for shooting at George 
the Third; — lucky for him that he did not hit his Majesty! 

It is very singular that we recognize all the bodily defects 
that unfit a man for military service, and all the intellectual 
ones that limit his range of thought, but always talk at him 
as if all his moral powers were perfect. I suppose we must 
punish evil-doers as we extirpate vermin; but I don’t know 
that we have any more right to judge them than we have to 
judge rats and mice, which are just as good as cats and 
weasels, though we think it necessary to treat them as 
criminals. 

The limitations of human responsibility have never been 
properly studied, unless it be by the phrenologists. You 
know from my lectures that I consider phrenology, as taught, 
a pseudo-science, and not a branch of positive knowledge; 
but, for all that, we owe it an immense debt. It has melted 
the world’s conscience in its crucible, and cast it in a new 
mold, with features less like those of Moloch and more like 
those of humanity. If it has failed to demonstrate its 
system of special correspondences, it has proved that there 
are fixed relations between organization and mind and 


EPISTOLARY. 


167 

character. It has brought out that great doctrine of moral 
insanity, which has done more to make men charitable and 
soften legal and theological barbarism than any one doctrine 
that I can think of since the message of peace and good-will 
to men. 

Automatic action in the moral world; the reflex movement 
which seems to be self-determination, and has been hanged 
and howled at as such (metaphorically) for nobody knows 
how many centuries: until somebody shall study this as 
Marshall Hall has studied reflex nervous action in the bodily 
system, I would not give much for men’s judgments of each 
others’ character. Shut up the robber and the defaulter, we 
must. But what if your oldest boy had been stolen from his 
cradle and bred in a North-Street cellar? What if you are 
drinking a little too much wine and smoking a little too much 
tobacco, and your son takes after you, and so your poor grand- 
son’s brain being a little injured in physical texture, he loses 
the fine moral sense on which you pride yourself, and doesn’t 
see the difference between signing another man’s name to a 
draft and his own? 

I suppose the study of automatic action in the moral world 
(you see what I mean through the apparent contradiction of 
terms) may be a dangerous one in the view of many people. 
It is liable to abuse, no doubt. People are always glad to 
get hold of anything which limits their responsibility. But 
remember that our moral estimates come down to us from 
ancestors who hanged children for stealing forty shillings’ 
worth, and sent their souls to perdition for the sin of being 
born, — who punished the unfortunate families of suicides, 
and in their eagerness for justice executed one innocent per- 
son every three years, on the average, as Sir James Mackin- 
tosh tells us. 

I do not know in what shape the practical question may 
present itself to you, but I will tell you my rule in life, and I 
think you will find it a good one. Treat bad men exactly as 
if they were insane. They are in-sane, out of health, morally. 
Reason, which is food to sound minds, is not tolerated, still 
less assimilated, unless administered with the greatest cau- 
tion; perhaps, not at all. Avoid collision with them, so far 
as you honorably can ; keep your temper, if you can, — for one 
angry man is as good as another ; restrain them from violence^ 
promptly, completely, and with the least possible injury, just 


168 


ELSIE VENNER. 


:as in the case of maniacs, — and when you have got rid of 
them, or got them tied hand and foot so that they can do no 
.mischief, sit down and contemplate them charitably, remem- 
bering that nine- tenths of their perversity comes from outside 
influences, drunken ancestors, abuse in childhood, bad com- 
pany, from which you have happily been preserved, and for 
some of which you, as a member of society, may be frac- 
tionally responsible. I think also that there are special in- 
fluences which work in the blood like ferments, and I have 
a suspicion that some of those curious old stories I citied 
may have more recent parallels. Have you ever met with 
.any cases which admitted of a solution like that which I 
lave mentioned? 

Yours very truly. 


Bernard Lang don to Philip Staples. 

My Dear Philip, — 

I have been for some months established in this place, 
turning the main crank of the machinery for the manufactory 
of accomplishments superintended by, or rather worked to the 
profit of, a certain Mr. Silas Peckham. He is a poor wretch, 
with a little thin fishy blood in his body, lean and flat, long- 
armed and large-handed, thick- jointed and thin-muscled, — 
you know those unwholesome, weak-eyed, half-fed creatures, 
that look not fit to be round among live folks, and yet not 
quite dead enough to bury. If you ever hear of my being in 
court to answer to a charge of assault and battery, you may 
guess that I have been giving him a thrashing to settle off old 
scores; for he is a tyrant, and has come pretty near killing 
his principal lady-assistant with overworking her and keep- 
ing her out of all decent privileges. 

Helen Darley is this lady’s name, — twenty-two or -three 
years old, I should think, — a very sweet, pale woman, — 
daughter of the usual country-clergyman, — thrown on her 
own resources from an early age, and the rest: a common 
story, but an uncommon person, — very. All conscience and 
sensibility, I should say, — a cruel worker, — no kind of regard 
for herself, — seems as fragile and supple as a young willow- 
shoot, but try her and you find she has the spring in her of a 
: steel cross-bow. I am glad I happened to come to this place, 


EPISTOLARY. 


169 5 


if it were only for her sake. I have saved that girl’s life; 
I am as sure of it as if I had pulled her out of the fire or 
water. 

Of course I’m in love with her, you say, — we always love* 
those whom we have benefited — “ saved her life, — her love was 
the reward of his devotion,” etc., etc., as in a regular set 
novel. In love, Philip? Well, about that, — I love Helen 
Darley — very much: there is hardly anybody I love so welL 
What a noble creature she is ! One of those that just go right 
on, do their own work and everybody else’s, killing themselves: 
inch by inch without ever thinking about it, — singing and. 
dancing at their toil when they begin, worn and saddened 
after a while, but pressing steadily on, tottering by-and-by,. 
and catching at the rail by the way-side to help them lift one' 
foot before the other, and at last falling, face down, arms 
stretched forward 

Philip, my boy, do you know I am the sort of man that 
locks his door sometimes and cries his heart out of his eyes, — 
that can sob like a woman and not be ashamed of it ? I come 
of fighting-blood on one side, you know; I think I could be- 
savage on occasion. But I am tender, — more and more ten- 
der as I come into my fullness of manhood. I don’t like ta 
strike a man, (laugh, if you like, — I know I hit hard when I 
do strike,) — but what I can’t stand is the sight of these poor.. 
patient, toiling women, who never find out in this life how 
good they are, and never know what it is to be told they are 
angels while they still wear the pleasing incumbrances of 
humanity. I don’t know what to make of these cases. TV 
think that a woman is never to be a woman again, whatever 
she may come to as an unsexed angel, — and that she should 
die unloved! Why does not somebody come and carry off 
this noble woman, waiting here all ready to make a man 
happy? Philip, do you know the pathos there is in the eyes: 
of unsought women, oppressed with the burden of an inner 
life unshared? I can see into them now as I could not in 
those earlier days. I sometimes think fheir pupils dilate on. 
purpose to let my consciousness glide through them; indeed,. 
I dread them, I come so close to the nerve of the soul itself 
in these momentary intimacies. You used to tell me I was, 
a Turk, — that my heart was full of pigeon-holes, with accom- 
modations inside for a whole flock of doves. I don’t know 
but I am still as Youngish as ever in my ways, — Brigham- 


170 


ELSIE VENNER. 


Youngish, I mean; at any rate, I always want to give a little 
love to all the poor things that cannot have a whole man 
to themselves. If they would only be contented with a 
little ! 

Here now are two girls in this school where I am teaching. 
One of them, Rosa M., is not more than sixteen years old, I 
think they say, but Nature has forced her into a tropical 
luxuriance of beauty, as if it were July with her, instead of 
May. I suppose it is all natural enough that this girl should 
like a young man’s attention, even if he were a grave school- 
master, but the eloquence of this young thing’s look is un- 
mistakable, — and yet she does not know the language it is 
talking, — they none of them do; and there is where a good 
many poor creatures of our good-for-nothing sex are mis- 
taken. There is no danger of my being rash, but I think this 
girl will cost somebody his life yet. She is one of those 
women men make a quarrel about and fight to the death 
for, — the old feral instinct, you know. 

Pray, don’t think I am lost in conceit, but there is another 
.girl here who I begin to think looks with a certain kindness 
on me. Her name is Elsie V., and she is the only daughter 
and heiress of an old family in this place. She is a por- 
tentous and almost fearful creature. If I should tell you all 
I know and a half of what I fancy about her, you would tell 
me to get my life insured at once. Yet she is the most pain- 
fully interesting being, — so handsome! so lonely! — for she 
has no friends among the girls, and sits apart from them, — 
with black hair like the flow of a mountain-brook after a 
thaw, with a low-browed, scowling beauty of face, and such 
•eyes as were never seen before, I really believe, in any human 
•creature. 

Philip, I don’t know what to say about this Elsie. There 
is something about her I have not fathomed. I have con- 
jectures which I could not utter to any living soul. I dare 
not even hint the possibilities which have suggested them- 
selves to me. This I will say, — that I do take the most in- 
tense interest in this young person, an interest much more 
like pity than love in its common sense. If what I guess at 
Is true, of all the tragedies of existence I ever knew this is the 
saddest, and yet so full of meaning! Do not ask me any 
■questions, — I have said more than I meant to already; but I 
am involved in strange doubts and perplexities, — in dangers 


EPISTOLARY. 


171 


too, very possibly, — and it is a relief just to speak ever so 
guardedly of them to an early and faithful friend. 

Yours ever, 


Bernard. 

P. S. I remember you had a copy of Fortunius Licetua 
“ De Monstris ” among your old books. Can’t you lend it 
to me for a while ? I am curious, and it will amuse me. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


OLD SOPHY CALLS ON THE REVEREND DOCTOR. 

The two meeting-houses which faced each other like a 
pair of fighting-cocks had not flapped their wings or crowed 
.s.t each other for a considerable time. The Reverend Mr. 
Eairweather had been dyspeptic and low-spirited of late, and 
was too languid for controversy. The Reverend Doctor 
Honeywood had been very busy with his benevolent associa- 
tions, and had discoursed chiefly on practical matters, to 
the neglect of special doctrinal subjects. His senior deacon 
ventured to say to him that some of his people required to 
be reminded of the great fundamental doctrine of the worth- 
lessness of all human efforts and motives. Some of them 
were altogether too much pleased with the success of the 
'Temperance Society and the Association for the Relief of 
the Poor. There was a pestilent heresy about, concerning 
the satisfaction to be derived from a good conscience, — as 
if anybody ever did anything which was not to be hated, 
loathed, despised, and condemned. 

The old minister listened gravely, with an inward smile, 
and told his deacon that he would attend to his suggestion. 
After the deacon had gone, he tumbled over his manuscripts, 
until at length he came upon his first-rate old sermon on 
Human Nature.” He had read a great deal of hard the- 
ology, and had at last reached that curious state which is so 
•common in good ministers, — that, namely, in which they 
•contrive to switch off their logical faculties on the narrow 
side-track of their technical dogmas, while the great freight- 
train of their substantial human qualities keeps in the main 
highway of common-sense, in which kindly souls are always 
found by all who approach them by their human side. 

The Doctor read his sermon with a pleasant, paternal in- 
terest: it was well argued from his premises. Here and 
there he dashed his pen through a harsh expression. Now 
:and then he added an explanation or qualified a broad state- 


172 


SOPHY CALLS O N THE REVEREND DOCTOR. 173 

ment. But his mind was on the logical side-track, and he- 
followed the chain of reasoning without fairly perceiving 
where it would lead him, if he carried it into real life. 

He was just touching up the final proposition, when his 
granddaughter, Letty, once before referred to, came into the* 
room with her smiling face and lively movement. Miss 
Letty or Letitia Forrester was a city-bred girl of some- 
fifteen or sixteen years old, who was passing the summer 
with her grandfather for the sake of country air and quiet.. 
It was a sensible arrangement; for, having the promise of 
figuring as a belle by-and-by, and being a little given to 1 
dancing, and having a voice which drew a pretty dense circle* 
around the piano when she sat down to play and sing, it. 
was hard to keep her from being carried into society before 
her time, by the mere force of mutual attraction. Fortu- 
nately, she had some quiet as well as some social tastes, and 
was willing enough to pass two or three of the summer- 
months in the country, where she was much better bestowed, 
than she would have been at one of those watering-places 
where so many half -f ormed . girls get prematurely hardened! 
in the vice of self-consciousness. 

Miss Letty was altogether too wholesome, hearty, and 
high-strung a young girl to be a model, according to the 
flat-chested and cachectic pattern which is the classical type- 
of certain excellent young females, often the subjects of bio- 
graphical memoirs. But the old minister was proud of his 
granddaughter for all that. She was so full of life, so grace- 
ful, so generous, so vivacious, so ready always to do all she 
could for him and for everybody, so perfectly frank in her 
avowed delight in the pleasures which this miserable world 
offered her in the shape of natural beauty, of poetry, of’ 
music, of companionship, of books, of cheerful cooperation 
in the tasks of those about her, that the Reverend Doctor 
could not find it in his heart to condemn her because she 
was deficient in those particular graces and that signal 
other- worldliness he had sometimes noticed in feeble young 
persons suffering from various chronic diseases which im- 
paired their vivacity and removed them from the range of 
temptation. 

When Letty, therefore, came bounding into the old min- 
ister’s study, he glanced up from his manuscript, and, as his:, 
©ye fell upon her, it flashed across him that there was noth— 


174 


ELSIE VENNER. 


ing so very monstrous and unnatural about the specimen of 
-congenital perversion he was looking at, with his features 
opening into their pleasantest sunshine. Technically, ac- 
cording to the fifth proposition of the sermon on Human 
Nature, very bad, no doubt. Practically, according to the 
fact before him, a very pretty piece of the Creator’s handi- 
work, body and soul. Was it not a conceivable thing that 
the divine grace might have shown itself in different forms 
in a fresh young girl like Letitia, and in that poor thing he 
had visited yesterday, half -grown, half-colored, in bed for the 
last year with hip-disease? Was it to be supposed that this 
healthy young girl, with life throbbing all over her, could, 
without a miracle, be good according to the invalid pattern 
and formula? 

And yet there were mysteries in human nature which 
pointed to some tremendous perversion of its tendencies, — 
to some profound, radical vice of moral constitution, native 
or transmitted, as you will have it, but positive, at any rate, 
as the leprosy, breaking out in the blood of races, guard them 
ever so carefully. Did he not know the case of a young 
lady in Rockland, daughter of one of the first families in the 
place, a very beautiful and noble creature to look at, for 
whose bringing-up nothing had been spared, — a girl who had 
had governesses to teach her at the house, who had been 
indulged almost too kindly, — a girl whose father had given 
himself up to her, he being himself a pure and high-souled 
man? — and yet this girl was accused in whispers of having 
been on the very verge of committing a fatal crime; she 
was an object of fear to all who knew the dark hints which 
had been let fall about her, and there were some that be- 
lieved Why, what was this but an instance of the total 

obliquity and degeneration of the moral principle? and to 
what could it be owing, but to an innate organic tendency? 

“ Busy, grandpapa ? ” said Petty, and without waiting for 
an answer kissed his cheek with a pair of lips made on 
purpose for that little function, — fine, but richly turned out, 
the corners tucked in with a finish of pretty dimples, the 
rose-bud lips of girlhood’s June. 

The old gentleman looked at his granddaughter. Nature 
swelled up from his heart in a wave that sent a glow to his 
eheek and a sparkle to his eye. But it is very hard to be 
interrupted just as we are winding up a string of proposi- 


SOPHY CALLS OH THE REVEREND DOCTOR. 175 

tions with the grand conclusion which is the statement in 
brief of all that has gone before: our own starting-point, 
into which we have been trying to back our reader or listener 
as one backs a horse into the shafts. 

“ Video meliora, proboque, — I see the better, and approve 
it; deteriora' sequor, I follow after the worse; ’tis that 
natural dislike to what is good, pure, holy, and true, that 
inrooted selfishness, totally insensible to the claims of — 
Here the worthy man was interrupted by Miss Letty. 

“ Do come, if you can, grandpapa,” said the young girl ; 
^ here is a poor old black woman wants to see you so much ! ” 
The good minister was as kind-hearted as if he had never 
groped in the dust and ashes of those cruel old abstractions 
which have killed out so much of the world’s life and happi- 
ness. “ With the heart man believeth unto righteousness”; 
n man’s love is the measure of his fitness for good or bad 
■company here or elsewhere. Men are tattooed with their 
special beliefs like so many South-Sea Islanders; but a real 
human heart, with Divine love in it, beats with the same 
glow under all the patterns of all earth’s thousand tribes ! 

The Doctor sighed, and folded the sermon, and laid the 
Quarto Cruden on it. He rose from his desk, and, looking 
once more at the young girl’s face, forgot his logical con- 
clusions, and said to himself that she was a little angel, — 
which was in violent contradiction to the leading doctrine 
of his sermon on Human Nature. And so he followed her 
out of the study into the wide entry of the old-fashioned 
country-house. 

An old black woman sat on the plain oaken settle which 
humble visitors waiting to see the minister were wont to 
occupy, jShe was old, but how old it would be very hard 
to guess. She might be seventy. She might be ninety. One 
could not swear she was not a hundred. Black women re- 
main at a stationary age (to the eyes of white people, at 
least) for thirty years. They do not appear to change dur- 
ing this period any more than so many Trenton trilobites. 
Bent up, wrinkled, yellow-eyed, with long upper-lip, pro- 
jecting jaws, retreating chin, still meek features, long arms, 
large flat hands with uncolored palms and slightly webbed 
fingers, it was impossible not to see in this old creature a 
hint of the gradations by which life climbs up through the 
lower natures to the highest human developments. We can- 


176 


ELSIE VENNER. 


not tell such old women’s ages because we do not understands 
the physiognomy of a race so unlike our own. No doubt 
they see a great deal in each other’s faces that we cannot, — 
changes of color and expression as real as our own, blushes, 
and sudden betrayals of feeling, — just as these two canaries 
know what their single notes and short sentences and full: 
song with this or that variation mean, though it is a mys- 
tery to us unplumed mortals. 

This particular old black woman was a striking specimen, 
of her class. Old as she looked, her eye was bright and know- 
ing. She wore a red-and-yellow turban, which set off her 
complexion well, and hoops of gold in her ears, and beads of 
gold about her neck, and an old funeral ring upon her 
finger. She had that touching stillness about her which. 
belongs to animals that wait to be spoken to and then look, 
up with a kind of sad humility. 

“ Why, Sophy ! ” said the good minister, “ is this you ? ” 

She looked up with the still expression on her face. “ It’& 
ol’ Sophy,” she said. 

“ Why,” said the Doctor, “ I did not believe you could 
walk so far as this to save the Union. Bring Sophy a glass 
of wine, Letty. Wine’s good for old folks like Sophy and 
me, after walking a good way, or preaching a good while.” 

The young girl stepped into the back-parlor, where she- 
found the great pewter flagon in which the wine that was left 
after each communion-service was brought to the minister’s 
house. With much toil she managed to tip it so as to get 
a couple of glasses filled. The minister tasted his, and made 
old Sophy finish hers. 

“ I wan’ to see you ’n’ talk wi’ you all alone,” she said 
presently. 

The minister got up and led the way towards his study:. 
“ To be sure,” he said; he had only waited for her to rest 
a moment before he asked her into the library. The young 
girl took her gently by the arm, and helped her feeble steps 
along the passage. When they reached the study, she 
smoothed the cushion of a rocking-chair, and made the old 
woman sit down in it. Then she tripped lightly away, and 
left her alone with the minister. 

Old Sophy was a member of the Keverend Doctor Honey- 
wood’s church. She had been put through the necessary 
confessions in a tolerably satisfactory manner. To be sure* 


SOPHY CALLS ON THE REVEREND DOCTOR. 177 

•as her grandfather had been a cannibal chief, according to 
the common story, and, at any rate, a terrible wild savage, 
•and as her mother retained to the last some of the prejudices 
of her early education, there was a heathen flavor in her 
Christianity, which had often scandalized the elder of the 
minister’s two deacons. But the good minister had smoothed 
matters over : had explained that allowances were to be made 
for those who had been long sitting without the gate of 
Zion, — that, no doubt, a part of the curse which descended, 
to the children of Ham consisted in “ having the understand- 
ing darkened,” as well as the skin, — and so had brought his 
suspicious senior deacon to tolerate old Sophy as one of 
Hie communion of fellow-sinners. 


Poor things ! How little we know the simple notions 

with which these rudiments of souls are nourished by the 
Divine Goodness! Did not Mrs. Professor come home this 
very blessed mornirig with a story of one of her old black 
women ? 

“ And how do you feel to-day, Mrs. Robinson ? ” 

“ Oh, my dear, I have this singing in my head all the 
time.” (What doctors call tinnitus aurium.) 

“ She’s got a cold in the head,” said old Mrs. Rider. 

“ Oh, no, my dear ! Whatever I’m thinking about, it’s all 
this singing, this music. When I’m thinking of the dear 
Redeemer, it all turns into this singing and music. When 
the dark came to see me, and I asked him if he couldn’t cure 
me, and he said, Ho, — it was the Holy Spirit in me, singing 
to me; and all the time I hear this beautiful music, and it’s 
the Holy Spirit a-singing to me ” 


The good man waited for Sophy to speak; but she did not 
^pen her lips as yet. 

“ I hope you are not troubled in mind or body,” he said 
to her at length, finding she did not speak. 

The poor old woman took out a white handkerchief, and 
lifted it to her black face. She could not say a word for 
her tears and sobs. 

The minister would have consoled her; he was used to 
tears, and could in most cases withstand their contagion 
:manfully; but something choked his voice suddenly, and 


ELSIE VENNER. 


178 

when he called upon it he got no answer, but a tremulous- 
movement of the muscles, which was worse than silence. 

At last she spoke. 

“Oh, no, no, no! It’s my poor girl, my darling, my 
beauty, my baby, that’s grown up to be a woman; she will 
come to a bad end; she will do something that will make- 
them kill her or shut her up all her life. Oh, Doctor, 
Doctor, save her, pray for her! It a’n’t her fault. It a’n’t 
her fault. If they knew all that I know, they wouldn’ blame 
that poor child. I must tell you, Doctor: if I should die, 
perhaps nobody else would tell you. Massa Venner can t 
talk about it. Doctor Kittredge won’t talk about it. No- 
body but old Sophy to tell you, Doctor; and old Sophy can’t 
die without telling you.” 

The kind minister soothed the poor old soul with those 
gentle, quieting tones which had carried peace and comfort 
to so many chambers of sickness and sorrow, to so many 
hearts overburdened by the trials laid upon them. 

Old Sophy became quiet in a few minutes, and proceeded 
to tell her story. She told it in the low half -whisper which 
is the natural voice of lips oppressed with grief and fears; 
with quick glances around the apartment from time to time, 
as if she dreaded lest the dim portraits on the walls and 
the dark folios on the shelves might overhear her words. 

It was not one of those conversations which a third person 
can report minutely, unless by that miracle of clairvoyance 
known to the readers of stories made out of authors’ brains. 
Yet its main character can be imparted in a much briefer 
space than the old black woman took to give all its 
details. 

She went far back to the time when Dudley Venner was 
born, — she being then a middle-aged woman. The heir and 
hope of a family which had been narrowing down as if 
doomed to extinction, he had been surrounded with every 
care and trained by the best education he could have in 
New England. He had left college, and was studying the 
profession which gentlemen of leisure most affect, when he 
fell in love with a young girl left in the world almost alone, 
as he was. The old woman told the story of his young love 
and his joyous bridal with a tenderness which had some- 
thing more, even, than her family sympathies to account 
for it. Had she not hanging over her bed a paper-cutting: 


SOPHY CALLS ON THE REVEREND DOCTOR. 179 


of a profile — jet black, but not blacker than the face it rep- 
resented — of one who would have been her own husband in 
the small years of this century, if the vessel in which he 
went to sea, like Jamie in the ballad, had not sailed away 
and never come back to land? Had she not her bits of fur- 
niture stowed away which had been got ready for her own 
wedding, — two rocking-chairs, one worn with long use, one 
kept for him so long that it had grown a superstition with 
her never to sit in it, — and might he not come back yet, 
after all? Had she not her chest of linen ready for her 
humble house-keeping, with store of serviceable huckaback 
and piles of neatly folded kerchiefs, wherefrom this one that 
showed so white against her black face was taken, for that 
she knew her eyes would betray her in “ the presence ” ? 

All the first part of the story the old woman told tenderly, 
and yet dwelling upon every incident with a loving pleasure. 
How happy this young couple had been, what plans and proj- 
ects of improvement they had formed, how they lived in 
each other, always together, so young and fresh and beautiful 
as she remembered them in that one early summer when they 
walked arm in arm through the wilderness of roses that ran 
riot in the garden, — she told of this as loath to leave it and 
come to the woe that lay beneath. 

She told the whole story; — shall I repeat it? Hot now. 
If, in the course of relating the incidents I have undertaken 
to report, it tells itself, perhaps this will be better than to 
run the risk of producing a painful impression on some of 
those susceptible readers whom it would be ill-advised to 
disturb or excite, when they rather require to be amused 
and soothed. In our pictures of life, we must show the 
flowering-out of terrible growths which have their roots deep, 
deep underground. Just how far we shall lay bare the un- 
seemly roots themselves is a matter of discretion and taste, 
in which none of us are infallible. 

The old woman told the whole story of Elsie, of her birth, 
of her peculiarities of person and disposition, of the passion- 
ate fears and hopes with which her father had watched the 
course of her development. She recounted all her strange 
ways, from the hour when she first tried to crawl across the 
carpet, and her father’s look as she worked her way towards 
him. With the memory of Juliet’s nurse she told the story 
of her teething, and how, the woman to whose breast she had 


180 


ELSIE VENNER. 


clung dying suddenly about that time, they had to struggle 
hard with the child before she would learn the accomplish- 
ment of feeding with a spoon. And so of her fierce plays 
and fiercer disputes with that boy who had been her com- 
panion, and the whole scene of the quarrel when she struck 
him with those sharp white teeth, frightening her, old Sophy, 
almost to death; for, as she said, the boy would have died, 
if it hadn’t been for the old Doctor’s galloping over as fast 
as he could gallop and burning the places right out of his- 
arm. Then came the story of that other incident, suf- 
ficiently alluded to already, which had produced such an 
ecstasy of fright and left such a nightmare of apprehension 
in the household. And so the old woman came down to the 
present time. That boy she never loved nor trusted was 
grown to a dark, dangerous-looking man, and he was under 
their roof. He wanted to marry our poor Elsie, and Elsie 
hated him, and sometimes she would look at him over her 
shoulder just as she used to look at that woman she hated; 
and she, old Sophy, couldn’t sleep for thinking she should 
hear a scream from the white chamber some night and find! 
him in spasms such as that woman came so near dying with. 
And then there was something about Elsie she did not know 
what to make of: she would sit and hang her head some- 
times, and look as if she were dreaming; and she brought 
home books they said a young gentleman up at the great 
school lent her : and once she heard her whisper in her sleep,., 
and she talked as young girls do to themselves when they’re 
thinking about somebody they have a liking for and think 
nobody knows it. 

She finished her long story at last. The minister had 
listened to it in perfect silence. He sat still even when she- 
had done speaking, — still, and lost in thought. It was a very 
awkward matter for him to have a hand in. Old Sophy 
was his parishioner, but the Venners had a pew in the Rev- 
erend Mr. Fairweather’s meeting-house. It would seem that 
he, Mr. Fairweather, was the natural adviser of the parties 
most interested. Had he sense and spirit enough to deal 
with such people? Was there enough capital of humanity 
in his somewhat limited nature to furnish sympathy and un- 
shrinking service for his friends in an emergency ? or was he- 
too busy with his own attacks of spiritual neuralgia, and 
too much occupied with taking account of stock of his owna 


SOPHY CALLS ON THE REVEREND DOCTOR. 181 


^thin-blooded offenses, to forget himself and his personal in- 
terests on the small scale and the large, and run the risk of 
his life, if need were, at any rate give himself up without 
reserve to the dangerous task of guiding and counseling 
these distressed and imperiled fellow-creatures? 

The good minister thought the best thing to do would be to 
call and talk over some of these matters with Brother Fair- 
weather, — for so he would call him at times, especially if his 
senior deacon were not within earshot. Having settled this 
point, he comforted Sophy with a few words of counsel and 
a promise of coming to see her very soon. He then called 
his man to put the old white horse into the chaise and drive 
Sophy back to the mansion-house. 

When the Doctor sat down to his sermon again, it looked 
very differently from the way it had looked at the moment 
he had left it. When he came to think of it, he did not feel 
quite; so sure practically about that matter of the utter 
natural selfishness of everybody. There was Letty, now, 
seemed to take a very unselfish interest in that old black 
woman, and indeed in poor people generally; perhaps it 
would not be too much to say that she was always thinking 
of other people. He thought he had seen other young per- 
sons naturally unselfish, thoughtful for others ; it seemed to 
be a family trait in some he had known. 

But most of all he was exercised about this poor girl 
whose story Sophy had been telling. If what the old woman 
believed was true, — and it had too much semblance of prob- 
ability, — what became of his theory of ingrained moral ob- 
liquity applied to such a case? If by the visitation of God 
a person receives any injury which impairs the intellect or the 
moral perceptions, is it not monstrous to judge such a per- 
son by our common working standards of right and wrong? 
Certainly, everybody will answer,' in cases where there is a 
palpable organic change brought about, as when a blow on 
the head produces insanity. Fools! How long will it be 
before we shall learn that for every wound which betrays 
itself to the sight by a scar, there are a thousand unseen 
mutilations that cripple, each of them, some one or more of 
our highest faculties? If what Sophy told and believed was 
the real truth, what prayers could be agonizing enough, 
what tenderness could be deep enough, for this poor, lost, 
.blighted, hapless,’ blameless child of misfortune, struck by 


182 


ELSIE VENNER. 


such a doom as perhaps no living creature in all the sister- 
hood of humanity shared with her? 

The minister thought these matters over until his mind 
was bewildered with doubts and tossed to and fro on that 
stormy deep of thought heaving forever beneath the conflict, 
of windy dogmas. He laid by his old sermon. He put back 
a pile of old commentators with their eyes and mouths and 
hearts full of dust of the schools. Then he opened the book 
of Genesis at the eighteenth chapter and read that remark- 
able argument of Abraham’s with his Maker, in which he 
boldly appeals to first principles. He took as his text, 
“ Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? ” and began 
to write his sermon, afterwards so famous, — “ On the Ob- 
ligations of an Infinite Creator to a Finite Creature.” 

It astonished the good people, who had been accustomed so 
long to repeat mechanically their Oriental hyperboles of 
self-abasement, to hear their worthy minister maintaining 
that the dignified attitude of the old Patriarch, insisting on 
what was reasonable and fair with reference to his fellow- 
creatures, was really much more respectful to his Maker, and 
a great deal manlier and more to his credit, than if he had 
yielded the whole matter, and pretended that men had not. 
rights as well as duties. The same logic which had carried 
him to certain conclusions with reference to human nature,, 
this same irresistible logic carried him straight on from his 
text until he arrived at those other results, which not only 
astonished his people, as was said, but surprised himself. 
He went so far in defense of the rights of man, that he put 
his foot into several heresies, for which men had been burned 
so often, it was time, if it ever could be, to acknowledge the^ 
demonstration of the argumentum ad ignem. He did not 
believe in the responsibilities of idiots. He did not believe 
a new-born infant was morally answerable for other people’s 
acts. He thought a man with a crooked spine would never 
be called to account for not walking erect. He thought 
if the crook was in' his brain, instead of his back, he could 
not fairly be blamed for any consequence of this natural de- 
fect, whatever lawyers or divines might call it. He argued, 
that, if a person inherited a perfect mind, body, and dis- 
position, and had perfect teaching from infancy, that person 
could do nothing more than keep the moral law perfectly, 
but supposing that the Creator allows a person to be born with 


SOPHY CALLS ON THE REVEREND DOCTOR. 183 


an hereditary or ingrafted organic tendency, and then puts 
this person into the hands of teachers incompetent or posi- 
tively bad, is not what is called sin or transgression of the 
law necessarily involved in the premises? Is not a Creator 
bound to guard his children against the ruin which inherited 
ignorance might entail on them? Would it be fair for a 
parent to put into a child’s hands the title-deeds to all its 
future possessions, and a bunch of matches? Are not men 
children, nay, babes, in the eye of Omniscience? — The min- 
ister grew bold in his questions. Had not he as good right 
to ask questions as Abraham? 

This was the dangerous vein of speculation in which the 
[Reverend Doctor Honeywood found himself involved, as a 
consequence of the suggestions forced upon him by old 
Sophy’s communication. The truth was, the good man had 
got so humanized by mixing up with other people in various 
benevolent schemes, that, the very moment he could escape 
from his old scholastic abstractions, he took the side of hu- 
manity instinctively, just as the Father of the Faithful did, 
— all honor be to the noble old Patriarch for insisting on the 
worth of an honest man, and making the best terms he could 
for a very ill-conditioned metropolis, which might possibly, 
however, have contained ten righteous people, for whose sake 
it should be spared! 

The consequence of all this was, that he was in a singular 
and seemingly self-contradictory state of mind when he took 
his hat and cane and went forth to call on his heretical 
brother. The old minister took it for granted that the [Rev- 
erend Mr. Fairweather knew the private history of his par- 
ishioner’s faipily. He .did not reflect that there are griefs 
men never put into words, — that there are fears which must 
not be spoken, — intimate matters of consciousness which 
must be carried, as bullets which have been driven deep into 
the living tissues are sometimes carried, for a whole lifetime, 
— encysted griefs, if we may borrow the chirurgeon’s term, 
never to be reached, never to be seen, never to be thrown 
out, but to go into the dust with the frame that bore them 
about with it, during long years of anguish, known only to 
the sufferer and his Maker. Dudley Venner had talked with 
his minister about this child of his. But he had talked cau- 
tiously, feeling his way for sympathy, looking out for those 
indications of tact and judgment which would warrant him 


184 


ELSIE VENNER. 


in some partial communication, at least of tlie origin of his 
doubts and fears, and never finding them. 

There was something about the Reverend Mr. Fairweather 
which repressed all attempts at confidential intercourse. 
What this something was, Dudley Venner could hardly say; 
but he felt it distinctly, and it sealed his lips. He never got 
beyond certain generalities connected with education and 
religious instructon. The minister could not help discover- 
ing, however, that there were difficulties connected with this 
girl’s management, and he heard enough outside of the fam- 
ily to convince him that she had manifested tendencies, from 
an early age, at variance with the theoretical opinions he 
was in the habit of preaching, and in a dim way of holding 
for truth, as to the natural dispositions of the human being. 

About this terrible fact of congenital obliquity his new be- 
liefs began to cluster as a center, and to take form as a 
crystal around its nucleus. Still, he might perhaps 
have struggled against them, had it not been for the little 
Roman Catholic chapel he passed every Sunday, on his way 
to the meeting-house. Such a crowd of worshipers, swarm- 
ing into the pews like bees, filling all the aisles, running over 
at the door like berries heaped too full in the measure, — 
some kneeling on the steps, some standing on the side-walk, 
hats off, heads down, lips moving, some looking on devoutly 
from the other side of the street! Oh, could he have fol- 
lowed his own Bridget, maid of all work, into the heart of that 
steaming throng, and bowed his head while the priests in- 
toned their Latin prayers! could he have snuffed up the 
cloud of frankincense, and felt that he was in the great ark 
which holds the better half of the Christian world, while all 
around it are wretched creatures, some struggling against 
the waves in leaky boats, and some on ill-connected rafts, 
and some with their heads just above water, thinking to ride 
out the flood which is to sweep the earth clean of sinners, 
upon their own private, individual life-preservers ! 

Such was the present state of mind of the Reverend 
Chauncy Fairweather, when his clerical brother called upon 
him to talk over the questions to which old Sophy had called 
his attention. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


THE REVEREND DOCTOR CALLS ON BROTHER FAIRWEATHER. 

Eor the last few months, while all these various matters 
were going on in Rockland, the Reverend Chauncy Fair- 
weather had been busy with the records of ancient councils 
and the writings of the early fathers. The more he read, 
the more discontented he became with the platform upon 
which he and his people were standing. They and he were 
clearly in a minority, and his deep inward longing to be with 
the majority was growing to an engrossing passion. He 
yearned especially towards the good old unquestioning, au- 
thoritative Mother Church, with her articles of faith which 
took away the necessity of private judgment, with her tradi- 
tional forms and ceremonies, and her whole apparatus of 
stimulants and anodynes. 

About this time he procured a breviary and kept it in his 
desk under the loose papers. He sent to a Catholic book- 
store and obtained a small crucifix suspended from a string 
of beads. He ordered his new coat to be cut very narrow in 
the collar and to be made single-breasted. He began an in- 
formal series of religious conversations with Miss O’Brien, 
the young person of Irish extraction already referred to as 
Bridget, maid of all work. These not proving very satis- 
factory, he managed to fall in with Father McShane, the 
Catholic priest of the Rockland church. Father McShane 
encouraged his nibble very scientifically. It would be such a 
fine thing to bring over one of those Protestant heretics, and 
a “ liberal ” one too ! — not that there was any real difference 
between them, but it sounded better to say that one of these 
rationalizing free-and-equal religionists had been made a 
convert than any of those half-way Protestants who were the 
slaves of catechisms instead of councils and of commenta- 
tors instead of popes. The subtle priest played his disciple 
with his finest tackle. It was hardly necessary: when any- 
thing or anybody wishes to be caught, a bare hook and a 
coarse line are all that is needed. 


186 


186 


ELSIE VENNER. 


If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of 
his liberty, if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, 
nothing can stop him. And the temptation is to some na- 
tures a very great one. Liberty is often a heavy burden on 
a man. It involves that necessity for perpetual choice which 
is the kind of labor men have always dreaded. In common 
life we shirk it by forming habits, which take the place of 
self-determination. In politics party-organization saves us 
the pains of much thinking before deciding how to cast our 
vote. In religious matters there are great multitudes 
watching us perpetually, each propagandist ready with his 
bundle of finalities, which having accepted we may be at 
peace. The more absolute the submission demanded, the 
stronger the temptation becomes to those who have been long 
tossed among doubts and conflicts. 

So it is that in all the quiet bays which indent the shores 
of the great ocean of thought, at every sinking wharf, we see 
moored the hulks and the razees of enslaved or half-enslaved 
intelligences. They rock peacefully as children in their 
cradles on the subdued swell which comes feebly in over the 
bar at the harbor’s mouth, slowly crusting with barnacles, 
pulling at their iron cables as if they really wanted to be 
free, but better contented to remain bound as they are. For 
these no more the round unwalled horizon of the open sea, 
the joyous breeze aloft, the furrow, the foam, the sparkle that 
track the rushing keel! They have escaped the dangers of 
the wave, and lie still henceforth, evermore. Happiest of 
souls, if lethargy is bliss, and palsy the chief beatitude ! 

America owes its political freedom to religious Protestant- 
ism. But political freedom is reacting on religious prescrip- 
tion with still mightier force. We wonder, therefore, when 
we find a soul which was born to a full sense of individual 
liberty, an unchallenged right of self-determination on every 
new alleged truth offered to its intelligence, voluntarily sur- 
rendering any portion of its liberty to a spiritual dictator- 
ship which always proves to rest, in the last analysis, on a 
majority vote, nothing more nor less, commonly an old one, 
passed in those barbarous times when men cursed and mur- 
dered each other for differences of opinion, and of course 
were not in a condition to settle the beliefs of a compara- 
tively civilized community. 

In our disgust, we are liable to be intolerant. We forget 


REV. DOCTOR CALLS OK BRO. FAIRWEATHER. 187 

that weakness is not in itself a sin. We forget that even cow- 
ardice may call for our most lenient judgment, if it spring 
from innate infirmity. Who of us does not look with great 
tenderness on the young chieftain in the “ Fair Maid of 
Perth,” when he confesses his want of courage? All of us 
love companionship and sympathy; some of us may love 
them too much. All of us are more or less imaginative in 
our theology. Some of us may find the aid of material sym- 
bols a comfort, if not a necessity. The boldest thinker may 
have his moments of languor and discouragement, when he 
feels as if he could willingly exchange faiths with the old 
beldame crossing herself at the cathedral-door, — nay, that, if 
he could drop all coherent thought, and lie in the flowery 
meadow with the brown-eyed solemnly unthinking cattle, 
looking up to the sky, and all their simple consciousness 
staining itself blue, then down to the grass, and life turning 
to a mere greenness, blended with confused scents of herbs, 
— no individual mind-movement such as men are teased 
with, but the great calm cattle-sense of all time and all places 
that know the milky smell of herbs, — if he could be like 
these, he would be content to be driven home by the cowboy 
and share the grassy banquet of the king of ancient Babylon. 
Let us be very generous, then, in our judgment of those who 
leave the front ranks of thought for the company of the 
meek non-combatants who follow with the baggage and pro- 
visions. Age, illness, too much wear and tear, a half -formed 
paralysis, may bring any of us to this pass. But while we 
can think and maintain the rights of our own individuality 
against every human combination, let us not forget to cau- 
tion all who are disposed to waver that there is a cowardice 
which is criminal, and a longing for rest which it is base- 
ness to indulge. God help him, over whose dead soul in his 
living body must be uttered the sad supplication, Requiescat 
in pace ! 

A knock at the Reverend Mr. Fairweather’s study-door 
called his eyes from the book on which they were intent. He 
looked up, as if expecting a welcome guest. 

The Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, D. D., entered the 
study of the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather. He was not the 
expected guest. Mr. Fairweather slipped the book he was 
reading into a half-open drawer, and pushed in the drawer 


188 


ELSIE TENNER. 


He slid something which rattled under a paper lying on the 
table. He rose with a slight change of color, and welcomed, 
a little awkwardly, his unusual visitor. 

“ Good evening, Brother Fairweather! ” said the Reverend 
Doctor, in a very cordial, good-humored way. “ I hope I am 
not spoiling one of those eloquent sermons I never have a 
chance to hear.” 

“ Hot at all, not at all,” the younger clergyman answered, 
in a languid tone, with a kind of habitual half-querulous- 
ness which belonged to it, — the vocal expression which we 
meet with now and then, and which says as plainly as so 
many words could say it, “ I am a suffering individual. I 
am persistently undervalued, wronged, and imposed upon by 
mankind and the powers of the universe generally. But I 
endure all. I endure you. Speak. I listen. It is a burden 
to me, but I even approve. I sacrifice myself. Behold this 
movement of my lips! It is a smile.” 

The Reverend Doctor knew this forlorn way of Mr. Fair- 
weather’s, and was not troubled by it. He proceeded to re- 
late the circumstances of his visit from the old black woman, 
and the fear she was in about the young girl, who being a 
parishioner of Mr. Fairweather’s, he had thought it best to 
come over and speak to him about old Sophy’s fears and 
fancies. 

In telling the old woman’s story, he alluded only vaguely 
to those peculiar circumstances to which she had attributed 
so much importance, taking it for granted that the other 
minister must be familiar with the whole series of incidents 
she had related. The old minister was mistaken, as we have 
before seen. Mr. Fairweather had been settled in the place 
only about ten years, and, if he had heard a strange hint now 
and then about Elsie, had never considered it as anything 
more than idle and ignorant, if not malicious, village-gossip. 
All that he fully understood was that this had been a per- 
verse and unmanageable child, and that the extraordinary 
care which had been bestowed on her had been so far thrown 
away that she was a dangerous, self-willed girl, whom all 
feared and almost all shunned, as if she carried with her 
some malignant influence. 

He replied, therefore, after hearing the story, that Elsie 
had always given trouble. There seemed to be a kind of 
natural obliquity about her. Perfectly unaccountable. A 


BEY. DOCTOR CALLS ON BRO. FAIKWEATHER. 189 


Tery dark case. Never amenable to good influences. Had 
sent her good books from the Sunday-school library. Re- 
membered that she tore out the frontispice of one of them, 
and kept it, and flung the book out of the window. It was a 
picture of Eve’s temptation; and he recollected her saying 
that Eve was a gccd woman,' — and she*d have done just so, if 
she’d been there. A very sad child, — very sad ; bad from in- 
fancy. He had talked himself bold, and said all at once, — 

“ Doctor, do you know I am almost ready to accept your 
doctrine cf the congenital sinfulness of human nature? I 
am afraid that is the only thing which goes to the bottom of 
the difficulty.” 

The old minister’s face did not open so approvingly as Mr. 
Eairweather had expected. 

“ Why, j^es, — well, — many find comfort in it, — I believe ; — 
there is much to be said, — there are many bad people, — and 
bad children, — I can’t be so sure about bad babies, — though 
they cry very malignantly at times, — especially if they have 
the stomach-ache. But I really don’t know how to condemn 
this poor Elsie; she may have impulses that act in her like 
instincts in the lower animals, and so not come under the 
bearing cf our ordinary rules of judgment.” 

“ But this depraved tendency, Doctor, — this unaccountable 
perverseness. My dear Sir, I am afraid your school is in the 
right about human nature. Oh, those words of the Psalmist, 
* shapen in iniquity,’ and the rest! What are we to do with 
them, — we who teach that the soul of a child is an unstained 
white tablet ? ” 

11 King David was very subject to fits of humility, and 
much given to self-reproaches,” said the Doctor, in a rather 
dry way. “ We owe you and your friends a good deal for 
calling attention to the natural graces, which, after all, may, 
perhaps, be considered as another form of manifestation of 
the divine influence. Some of our writers have pressed 
rather too hard on the tendencies of the human soul toward 
evil as such. It may be questioned whether these views have 
not interfered with the sound training of certain young per- 
sons, sons of clergymen and others. I am nearer of your mind 
about the possibility of educating children so that they shall 
become good Christians without any violent transition. 
That is what I should hope for from bringing them up ‘ in 
the nurture and admonition of the Lord.’ ” 


190 


ELSIE VENNER. 


The younger minister looked puzzled, but presently an- 
swered, — * 

“ Possibly we may have called attention to some neglected 
truths ; but, after all, I fear we must go to the old school, if 
we want to get at the root of the matter. I know there is an 
outward amiability about many young persons, some young 
girls especially, that seems like genuine goodness ; but I have 
been disposed of late to lean toward your view, that these 
human affections, as we see them in our children, — ours, I 
say, though I have not the fearful responsibility of training 
any of my own, — are only a kind of disguised and sinful 
selfishness.” 

The old minister groaned in spirit. His heart had been 
softened by the sweet influences of children and grand- 
children. He thought of a half-sized grave in the burial- 
ground, and the fine, brave, noble-hearted boy he laid in 
it thirty years before, — the sweet, cheerful child who had 
made his home all sunshine until the day when he was 
bought into it, his long curls dripping, his fresh lips purple 
in death, — foolish dear little blessed creature to throw him- 
self into the deep water to save the drowning boy, who clung 
about him and carried him under! Disguised selfishness! 
And his granddaughter too, whose disguised selfishness was 
the light of his household! 

“ Don’t call it my view T ! ” he said. “ Abstractly, perhaps, 
all natures may be considered vitiated; but practically, as I 
see it in life, the divine grace keeps pace with the perverted 
instincts from infancy in many natures. Besides, this per- 
version itself may often be disease, bad habits transmitted, 
like drunkenness, or some hereditary misfortune, as with this 
Elsie we were talking about.” 

The younger minister was completely mystified. At every 
step he made towards the Doctor’s recognized theological 
position, the Doctor took just one step towards his. They 
would cross each other soon at this rate, and might 
as well exchange pulpits, — as Colonel Sprowle once wished 
they would, it may be remembered. 

The Doctor, though a much clearer-headed man, was al- 
most equally puzzled. He turned the conversation again 
upon Elsie, and endeavored to make her minister feel the im- 
portance of bringing every friendly influence to bear upon 
her at this critical period of her life. His sympathies did 


KEY. DOCTOR CALLS ON BRO. FAIRWEATHER. 191 


not seem so lively as the Doctor could have wished. Perhaps 
he had vastly more important objects of solicitude in his 
own spiritual interests. 

A knock at the door interrupted them. The Reverend Mr. 
Fairweather rose and went towards it. As he passed the 
table, his coat caught something, which came rattling to the 
floor. It was a crucifix with a string of beads attached. 
As he opened the door the Milesian features of Father Mc- 
Shane presented themselves, and from their center proceeded 
the clerical benediction in Irish-sounding Latin, Pax 
vobiscum ! 

The Reverend Doctor Honeywood rose and left the priest 
and his disciple together. # 


CHAPTER XIX. 


THE SPIDER ON HIS THREAD. 

There was nobody, then, to counsel poor Elsie, except her 
father, who had learned to let her have her own way so as not. 
to disturb such relations as they had together, and the old 
black woman, who had a real, plough limited influence over 
the girl. Perhaps she did not need counsel. To look upon 
her, one might well suppose that she was competent to defend 
herself against any enemy she was like to have. That glit- 
tering, piercing eye was not to be softened by a few smooth 
words spoken in low tones, charged with the common senti- 
ments which win their way to maiden’s hearts. That round, 
lithe, sinuous figure was as full of dangerous life as ever lay 
under the slender flanks and clean-shaped limbs of a panther. 

There were particular times when Elsie was in such a mood 
that it must have been a bold person who would have in- 
truded upon her with reproof or counsel. “ This is one of her 
days,” old Sophy would say quietly to her father, and he 
would, as far as possible, leave her to herself. These days 
were more frequent, as old Sophy’s keen, concentrated watch- 
fulness had taught her, at certain periods of the year. It 
was in the heats of summer that they were most common and 
most strongly characterized. In winter, on the other hand, 
she was less excitable, and even at times heavy and as if 
chilled and dulled in her sensibilities. It was a strange,, 
paroxysmal kind of life that belonged to her. It seemed to 
come and go with the sunlight. All winter long she would 
be comparatively quiet, easy to manage, listless, slow in her 
motions; her eye would lose something of its strange luster; 
and the old nurse would feel so little anxiety, that her whole 
expression and aspect would show the change, and people 
who would say to her, “ Why, Sophy, how young you’re 
looking ! ” 

As the spring came on, Elsie would leave the fireside, have 
her tiger-skin spread in the empty southern chamber next 


THE SPIDER ON HIS THREAD. 193 

the wall, and lie there basking for whole hours in the sun- 
shine. As the season warmed, the light would kindle afresh 
in her eyes, and the old woman’s sleep would grow restless 
again, — for she knew, that, so long as the glitter was fierce 
in the girl’s eyes, there was no trusting her impulses or 
movements. 

At last, when the veins of the summer were hot and 
swollen, and the juices of all the poison-plants and the blood 
of all the creatures that feed upon them had grown thick 
and strong, about the time when the second mowing was 
In hand, and the brown, wet-faced men were following up the 
scythes as they chased the falling waves of grass, (falling as 
the waves fall on sickle-curved beaches; the foam-flowers 
dropping as the grass-flowers drop, — with sharp semivowel 
■consonantal sounds — frsh , — for that is the way the sea talks, 
and leaves all pure vowel-sounds for the winds to breathe over 
it, and all mutes to the unyielding earth,) — about this time 
of over-ripe midsummer, the life of Elsie seemed fullest of 
its malign and restless instincts. This was the period of the 
year when the Rockland people were most cautious of wander- 
ing in the leafier coverts which skirted the base of The 
Mountain, and the farmers liked to wear thick, long boots, 
whenever they went into the bushes. But Elsie was never so 
much given to roaming over The Mountain as at this season ; 
and as she had grown more absolute and uncontrollable, she 
was as like to take the night as the day for her rambles. 

At this season, too, all her peculiar tastes in dress and 
ornament came out in a more striking way than at other 
times. She was never so superb as then, and never so 
threatening in her scowling beauty. The barred skirts she 
always fancied showed sharply beneath her diaphanous mus- 
lins; the diamonds often glittered on her breast as if for her 
own pleasure rather than to dazzle others; the asp-like bracelet 
hardly left her arm. She was never seen without some neck- 
lace, — either the golden cord she wore at the great party, or a 
chain of mosaics, or simply a ring of golden scales. Some 
said that Elsie always slept in a necklace, and that when she 
died she was to be buried in one. It was a fancy of hers, — 
but many thought there was a reason for it. 

Nobody watched Elsie with a more searching eye than her 
cousin, Dick Yenner. He had kept more out of her way of 
late, it is true, but there was not a movement she made which 


194 


ELSIE VENNER. 


he did not carefully observe just so far as he could without 
exciting her suspicion. It was plain enough to him that the 
road to fortune was before him, and that the first thing was 
to marry Elsie. What course he should take with her, or 
with others interested, after marrying her, need not be: 
decided in a hurry. 

He had now done all he could expect to do at present in the 
way of conciliating the other members of the household. The 
girl’s father tolerated him, if he did not even like him. 
Whether he suspected his project or not Dick did not feel 
sure; but it was something to have got a foot-hold in the 
house, and to have overcome any prepossession against him 
which his uncle might have entertained. To be a good 
listener and a bad billiard-player was not a very great sacri- 
fice to effect this object. Then old Sophy could hardly help 
feeling well-disposed towards him, after the gifts he had 
bestowed on her and the court he had payed her. These 
were the only persons on the place of much importance to 
gain over. The people employed about the house and farm- 
lands had little to do with Elsie, except to obey her without 
questioning her commands. 

Mr. Richard began to think of reopening his second 
parallel. But he had lost something of the coolness with 
which he had begun his system of operations. The more he 
had reflected upon the matter, the more he had convinced 
himself that this was his one great chance in life. If he 
suffered this girl to escape him, such an opportunity could 
hardly, in the nature of things, present itself a second time. 
Only one life between Elsie and her fortune, — and lives are 
so uncertain! The girl might not suit him as a wife. 
Possibly. Time enough to find out after he had got her. 
In short, he must have the property, and Elsie Yenner, as 
she was to go with it, — and then, if he found it convenient 
and agreeable to lead a virtuous life, he would settle down 
and raise children and vegetables; but if he found it incon- 
venient and disagreeable, so much the worse for those who 
made it so. Like many other persons, he was not principled 
against virtue, provided virtue were a better investment than 
its opposite; but he knew that there might be contingencies 
in which the property would be better without its incum- 
brances, and he contemplated this conceivable problem in the 
light of all its possible solutions. 


THE SPIDER ON HIS THREAD. 


195 


One thing Mr. Richard could not conceal from himself: 
JSlsie had some new cause of indifference, at least, if fiot of 
aversion to him. With the acuteness which persons who 
make a sole business of their own interest gain by practice, 
so that fortune-hunters are often shrewd where real lovers 
are terribly simple, he fixed at once on the young man up at 
the school where the girl had been going of late, as probably 
at the bottom of it. 

“ Cousin Elsie in love ! ” so he communed with himself 
upon his lonely pillow. “ In love with a Yankee school- 
master ! What else can it be ? Let him look out for himself ! 
He’ll stand but a bad chance between us. What makes you 
think she’s in love with him? Met her walking with him. 
Don’t like her looks and ways; — she’s thinking about some- 
thing, anyhow. Where does she get those books she is read- 
ing so often? Not out of our library, that’s certain. If I 
could have ten minutes’ peep into her chamber now I would 
find out where she got them, and what mischief she was up 
to.” 

At that instant, as if some tributary demon had heard his 
wish, a shape which could be none but Elsie’s flitted through 
a gleam of moonlight into the shadow of the tree. She was 
.setting out on one of her midnight rambles. 

Dick felt his heart stir in its place, and presently his 
cheeks flushed with the old longing for an adventure. It 
was not much to invade a young girl’s deserted chamber, but 
it would amuse a wakeful hour, and tell him some little 
matters he wanted to know. The chamber he slept in was 
over the room which Elsie chiefly occupied at this season. 
There was no great risk of his being seen or heard, if he 
ventured downstairs to her apartment. 

Mr. Richard Venner, in the pursuit of his interesting proj- 
ect, arose and lighted a lamp. He wrapped himself in a 
dressing-gown and thrust his feet into a pair of cloth slippers. 
He stole carefully down the stair, and arrived safely at the 
door of Elsie’s room. The young lady had taken the natural 
precaution to leave it fastened, carrying the key with her, no 
doubt, — unless, indeed, she had got out by the window, which 
was not far from the ground. Dick could get in at this 
window easily enough, but he did not like the idea of leaving 
liis footprints in the flower-bed just under it. He returned 
Lo his own chamber, and held a council of war with himself. 


ELSIE VENNER. 


l l J6 

He put his head out of his own window and looked at that 
beneath. It was open. He then went to one of his trunks, 
which he unlocked, and began carefully removing its con- 
tents. What these were we need not stop to mention, — only 
remarking that there were dresses of various patterns, which, 
might afford an agreeable series of changes, and in certain 
contingencies prove eminently useful. After removing a few 
of these, he thrust his hand to the very bottom of the remain- 
ing pile and drew out a coiled strip of leather many yards in 
length, ending in a noose, — a tough, well-seasoned lasso, look- 
ing as if it had seen service and was none the worse for it. 
He uncoiled a few yards of this and fastened it to the knob 
of a door. Then he threw the loose end out of the window 
so that it should hang by the open casement of Elsie’s room.. 
By this he let himself down opposite her window, and with a 
slight effort swung himself inside the room. He lighted a 
match, found a candle, and, having lighted that, looked 
curiously about him, as Clodius might have done when he 
smuggled himself in among the Vestals. 

Elsie’s room was almost as peculiar as her dress and orna- 
ments. It was a kind of museum of objects, such as the 
woods are full of to those who have eyes to see them, but 
many of them such as only few could hope to reach, even if 
they knew where to look for them. Crows’ nests which are 
never found but in the tall trees, commonly enough in the 
forks of ancient hemlocks, eggs of rare birds, which must 
have taken a quick eye and a hard climb to find and get hold 
of, mosses and ferns of unusual aspect, and quaint mon- 
strosities of vegetable growth, such as Nature delights in,, 
showed that Elsie had her tastes and fancies like any natural- 
ist or poet. 

Nature, when left to her own freaks in the forest, is- 
grotesque and fanciful to the verge of license, and beyond it.. 
The foliage of trees does not always require clipping to make 
it look like an image of life. From those windows at Canoe 
Meadow, among the mountains, we could see all summer long 
a lion rampant, a Shanghai chicken, and General Jackson on 
horseback, done by Nature in green leaves, each with a single 
tree. But to Nature’s tricks with boughs and roots and 
smaller vegetable growths there is no end. Her fancy is; 
infinite, and her humor not always refined. There is a per- 
petual reminiscence of animal life in her rude caricatures,. 


THE SPIDER ON HIS THREAD. 


197 


which sometimes actually reach the point of imitating the 
complete human figure, as in that extraordinary specimen 
which nobody will believe to be genuine, except the men of 
science, and of which the discreet reader may have a glimpse 
by application in the proper quarter. 

Elsie had gathered so many of these sculpture-like mon- 
strosities, that one might have thought she had robbed old 
Sophy’s grandfather of his fetiches. They helped to give 
her room a kind of enchanted look, as if a witch had her home 
in it. Over the fireplace was a long, staff-like branch, 
strangled in the spiral coils of one of those vines which strain 
the smaller trees in their clinging embraces, sinking into the 
hark until the parasite becomes almost identified with its 
support. With these sylvan curiosities were blended objects 
of art, some of them not less singular, but others showing a 
love for the beautiful in form and color such as a girl of fine 
organization and nice culture might naturally be expected to 
feel and to indulge, in adorning her apartment. 

All these objects, pictures, bronzes, vases, and the rest, did 
not detain Mr. Richard Venner very long, whatever may 
have been his sensibilities to art. He was more curious about 
hooks and papers. A copy of Keats lay on the table. He 
opened it and read the name of Bernard C. Langdon on the 
blank leaf. An envelope was on the table with Elsie’s name 
written in a similar hand ; but the envelope was empty, and he 
'•could not find the note it contained. Her desk was locked, 
and it would not be safe to tamper with it. He had seen 
enough; the girl received books and notes from this fellow 
up at the school, — this usher, this Yankee quill-driver; — he 
was aspiring to become the lord of the Dudley domain, then, 
was he? 

Elsie had been reasonably careful. She had locked up her 
papers, whatever they might be. There was little else that 
promised to reward his curiosity, but he cast his eye on 
everything. There was a clasp-Bible among her books. 
Dick wondered if she ever unclasped it. There was a book of 
hymns ; it had her name in it, and looked as if it might have 
been often read; — what the diablo had Elsie to do with 
hymns ? 

Mr. Richard Venner was in an observing and analytical 
state of mind, it will be noticed, or he might perhaps have 
been touched with the innocent betrayals of the poor girl’s 


198 


ELSIE YENNER. 


chamber. Had she, after all, some human tenderness in her 
heart? That was not the way he put the question, — but 
whether she would take seriously to this schoolmaster, and 
if she did, what would be the neatest and surest and quickest 
way of putting a stop to all that nonsense. All this, however, 
he could think over more safely in his own quarters. So he 
stole softly to the window, and, catching the end of the 
leathern thong, regained his own chamber and drew in the 
lasso. 

It needs only a little jealousy to set a man on who is 
doubtful in love or wooing, or to make him take hold of his 
courting in earnest. As soon as Dick had satisfied himself 
that the young schoolmaster was his rival in Elsie’s good 
graces, his whole thoughts concentrated themselves more than 
ever on accomplishing his great design of securing her for 
himself. There was no time to be lost. He must come into 
closer relations with her, so as to withdraw her thoughts from 
this fellow, and to find out more exactly what was the state 
of her affections, if she had any. So he began to court her 
company again, to propose riding with her, to sing to her, to 
join her whenever she was strolling about the grounds, to 
make himself agreeable, according to the ordinary under- 
standing of that phrase, in every way which seemed to 
promise a chance for succeeding in that amiable effort. 

The girl treated him more capriciously than ever. She m 
would be sullen and silent, or she would draw back fiercely 
at some harmless word or gesture, or she would look at him 
with her eyes narrowed in such a strange way and with such 
a wicked light in them that Dick swore to himself they were 
too much for him, and would leave her for the moment. Yet 
she tolerated him, almost as a matter of necessity, and some- 
times seemed to take a kind of pleasure in trying her power 
upon him. This he soon found out, and humored her in the 
fancy that she could exercise a kind of fascination over him, 
— though there were times in which he actually felt an in- 
fluence he could not understand, an effect of some peculiar 
expression about her, perhaps, but still centering in those 
diamond eyes of hers which it made one feel so curiously to 
look into. 

Whether Elsie saw into his object or not was more than he 
could tell. His idea was, after having conciliated the good- 
will of all about her as far as possible, to make himself first 


THE SPIDER 0 N HIS THREAD. 199 1 

a habit and then a necessity with the girl, — not to spring any 
trap of a declaration upon her until tolerance had grown 
into such a degree of inclination as her nature was like to- 
admit. He had succeeded in the first part of his plan. He 
was at liberty to prolong his visit at his own pleasure. This- 
was not strange; these three persons, Dudley Venner, his 
daughter, and his nephew, represented all that remained of an 
old and honorable family. Had Elsie been like other girls, 
her father might have been less willing to entertain a young 
fellow like Dick as an inmate; but he had long outgrown all 
the slighter apprehensions which he might have had in com- 
mon with all parents, and followed rather than led the im- 
perious instincts of his daughter. It was not a question of 
sentiment, but of life and death, or more than that, — some 1 
dark ending, perhaps, which would close the history of his 
race with disaster and evil report upon the lips of all coming 
generations. 

As to the thought of his nephew’s making love to his 
daughter, it had almost passed from his mind. He had been 
so long in the habit of looking at Elsie as outside of all 
common influences and exceptional in the law of her nature,, 
that it was difficult for him to think of her as a girl to be 
fallen in love with. Many persons are surprised, when others 
court their female relatives; they know them as good young^ 
or old women enough, — aunts, sisters, nieces, daughters, what- 
ever they may be, — but never think of anybody’s falling in 
love with them, any more than of their being struck by light- 
ning. But in this case there were special reasons, in addi- 
tion to the common family delusion, — reasons which seemed 
to make it impossible that she should attract a suitor. Who 
would dare to marry Elsie? No, let her have the pleasure, 
if it was one, at any rate the wholesome excitement, of com- 
panionship; it might save her from lapsing into melancholy 
or a worse form of madness. Dudley Venner had a kind of 
superstition, too, that, if Elsie could only outlive three 
septenaries, twenty-one years, so that, according to the prev- 
alent idea, her whole frame would have been thrice made 
over, counting from her birth, she would revert to the natural 
standard of health of mind and feelings from which she had 
been so long perverted. The thought of any other motive 
than love being sufficient to induce Richard to become her 
suitor had not occurred to him. He had married early, at 


200 


ELSIE VENNER. 


that happy period when interested motives are least apt to 
influence the choice; and his single idea of marriage was, 
that it was the union of persons naturally drawn towards 
each other by some mutual attraction. Very simple, per- 
haps; but he had lived lonely for many years since his wife’s 
death, and judged the hearts of others, most of all of his 
brother’s son, by his own. He had often thought whether, 
in case of Elsie’s dying or being necessarily doomed to seclu- 
.sion, he might not adopt this nephew and make him his heir ; 
but it had not occurred to him that Richard might wish to 
become his son-in-law for the sake of his property. 

It is very easy to criticise other people’s modes of dealing 
with their children. Outside observers see results; parents 
-see processes. They notice the trivial movements and ac- 
cents which betray the blood of this or that ancestor; they 
can detect the irrepressible movement of hereditary impulse 
in looks and acts which mean nothing to the common ob- 
server . To be a parent is almost to be a fatalist. This boy 
sits with legs crossed, just as his uncle used to whom he never 
saw; his grandfathers both died before he was born, but he 
has the movement of the eyebrows which we remember in one 
of them, and the gusty temper of the other. 

These are things parents can see, and which they must take 
account of in education, but which few except parents can be 
expected to really understand. Here and there a sagacious 
jperson, old, or of middle age, who has triangulated a race, 
that is, taken three or more observations from the several 
standing- places of three different generations, can tell pretty 
nearly the range of possibilities and the limitations of a 
child, actual or potential, of a given stock, — errors excepted 
always, because children of the same stock are not bred just 
.alike, because the traits of some less known ancestor are 
liable to break out at any time, and because each human 
being has, after all, a small fraction of individuality about 
him which gives him a flavor, so that he is distinguishable 
from others by his friends or in a court of justice, and which 
occasionally makes a genius or a saint or a criminal of him. 
It is well that young persons cannot read these fatal oracles 
of Nature. Blind impulse is her highest wisdom, after all. 
"We make our great jump, and then she takes the bandage off 
our eyes. That is the way the broad sea-level of average is 
maintained, and the physiological democracy is enabled t« 


THE SPIDER ON HIS THREAD. 


201 


fight against the principle of selection which would disin- 
herit all the weaker children. The magnificent constituency^ 
of mediocrities of which the world is made up, — the people 
without biographies, whose lives have made a clear solution 
in the fluid menstruum of time, instead of being precipitated 

in the opaque sediment of history 

But this is a narrative, and not a disquisition. 


CHAPTER XX. 


FROM WITHOUT AND FROM WITHIN.' # 

There were not wanting people who accused Dudley Ven- 
Tier of weakness and bad judgment in his treatment of his 
daughter. Some were of opinion that the great mis- 
take was in not “ breaking her will ” when she was a little 
child. There was nothing the matter with her, they said, but 
that she had been spoiled by indulgence. If they had had 
the charge of her, they’d have brought her down. She’d 
got the upper hand of her father now; but if he’d only 
taken hold of her in season! There are people who think 
that everything may be done, if the doer, be he educator or 
physician, be only called “ in season.” No doubt, — but in 
season would often be a hundred or two years before the 
child was born ; and people never send so early as that. 

The father of Elsie Yenner knew his duties and his diffi- 
culties too well to trouble himself about anything others 
might think or say. So soon as he found that he could not 
.govern his child, he gave his life up to following her and 
protecting her as far as he could. It was a stern and ter- 
rible trial for a man of acute sensibility, and not without 
force of intellect and will, and the manly ambition for him- 
self and his family-name which belonged to his endowments 
and his position. Passive endurance is the hardest trial to 
persons of such a nature. 

What made it still more a long martyrdom was the neces- 
sity for bearing his cross in utter loneliness. He could not 
tell his griefs. He could not talk of them even with those 
who knew their secret spring. His minister had the un- 
sympathetic nature which is common in the meaner sort of 
•devotees, — persons who mistake spiritual selfishness for 
sanctity, and grab at the infinite prize of the great Future 
and Elsewhere with the egotism they excommunicate in its 
Iiardly more odious forms of avarice and self-indulgence. 
Plow could he speak with the old physician and the old black 

202 


FROM WITHOUT AND FROM WITHIN. 20 $ 


woman about a sorrow and a terror which but to name was to 
strike dumb the lips of Consolation ? 

In the dawn of his manhood he had found that second 
consciousness for which young men and young women go 
about looking into each other’s faces, with their sweet, artless 
aim playing in every feature, and making them beauti- 
ful to each other, as to alb of us. He had found his other 
self early, before he had grown weary in the search and 
wasted his freshness in vain longings : the lot of many, per- 
haps we may say of most, who infringe the patent of our 
social order by intruding themselves into a life already upon 
half-allowance of the necessary luxuries of existence. The 
life he had led for a brief space was not only beautiful in 
outward circumstances, as old Sophy had described it to the 
Reverend Doctor. It was that delicious process of the tun- 
ing of two souls to each other, string by string, not without 
little half -pleasing discords now and then, when some chord 
in one or the other proves to be over-strained or over-lax,, 
but always approaching nearer and nearer to harmony, until 
they become at last as two instruments with a single voice. 
Something more than a year of this blissful doubled con- 
sciousness had passed over him when he found himself' 
once more alone, — alone, save for the little diamond-eyed 
child lying in the old black woman’s arms, with the coral 
necklace round her throat and the rattle in her hand. 

He would not die by his own act. It was not the way in 
his family. There may have been other, perhaps better rea- 
sons, but this was enough; he did not come of suicidal 
stock. He must live for this child’s sake, at any rate; and 
yet, — oh, yet, who could tell with what thoughts he looked 
upon her? Sometimes her little features would look placid,, 
and something like a smile would steal over them; then all 
his tender feelings would rush up into his eyes, and he would 
put his arms out to take her from the old woman, — but all 
at once her eyes would narrow and she would throw her head 
back, and a shudder would seize him as he stooped over his 
child, — he could not look upon her, — he could not touch his 
lips to her cheek ; nay, there would sometimes come into his 
soul such frightful suggestions that he would hurry from the 
room lest the hinted thought should become a momentary 
madness and he should lift his hand against the hapless 
infant which owed him life. 


204 


ELSIE VENNER. 


In those miserable days he used to wander all over The 
Mountain in his restless endeavor to seek some relief for in- 
ward suffering in outward action. He had no thought of 
throwing himself from the summit of any of the broken cliffs, 
but he clambered over them recklessly, as having no particu- 
lar care for his life. Sometimes he would go into the ac- 
cursed district where the venomous reptiles were always to 
be dreaded, and court their worst haunts, and kill all he 
could come near with a kind of blind fury which was strange 
in a person of his gentle nature. 

One overhanging cliff was a favorite haunt of his. It 
frowned upon his home beneath in a very menacing way ; he 
noticed slight seams and fissures that looked ominous; — what 
would happen if it broke off some time or other and come 
crashing down on the fields and roofs below? He thought 
of such a possible catastrophe with a singular indifference, in 
fact with a feeling almost like pleasure. It would be such a 
swift and thorough solution of this great problem of life he 
was working out in ever- recurring daily anguish! The re- 
mote possibility of such a catastrophe had frightened some 
timid dwellers beneath The Mountain to other places of resi- 
dence; here the danger was most imminent, and yet he loved 
to dwell upon the chances of its occurrence. Hanger is often 
the best counter-irritant in cases of mental suffering; he 
found a solace in careless exposure of his life, and learned 
to endure the trials of each day better by dwelling in imagi- 
nation on the possibility that it might be the last for him 
and the home that was his. 

Time, the great consoler, helped these influences, and he 
gradually fell into more easy and less dangerous habits of 
life. He ceased from his more perilous rambles. He thought 
less of the danger from the great overhanging rocks and 
forests; they had hung there for centuries; it was not very 
likely they would crash or slide in his time. He became 
accustomed to all Elsie’s strange looks and ways. Old Sophy 
dressed her with ruffles round her neck, and hunted up the 
red coral branch with silver bells which the little toothless 
Dudleys had bitten upon for a hundred years. By an in- 
finite effort, her father forced himself to become the com- 
panion of this child, for whom he had such a mingled feel- 
ing, but whose presence was always a trial to him and often 
a terror. 


FROM WITHOUT AND FROM WITHIN. 205 ' 

At a cost which no human being could estimate, he had 
done his duty, and in some degree reaped his reward. Elsie 
grew up with a kind of filial feeling for him, such as her 
nature was capable of. She never would obey him; that 
was not to be looked for. Commands, threats, punishments, 
were out of the question with her ; the mere physical effects 
of crossing her will betrayed themselves in such changes of 
expression and manner that it would have been senseless to 
attempt to govern her in any such way. Leaving her mainly 
to herself, she could be to some extent indirectly influenced, 
— not otherwise. She called her father “ Dudley,” as if he 
had been her brother. She ordered everybody and would 
be ordered by none. 

Who could know all these things, except the few people of 
the household? What wonder, therefore, that ignorant and 
shallow persons laid the blame on her father of those peculiari- 
ties which were freely talked about, — of those darken tenden- 
cies which were hinted of in whispers ? To all this talk, so far 
as it reached him, he was supremely indifferent, not only 
with the indifference which all gentlemen feel to the gossip 
of their inferiors, but with a charitable calmness which did 
not wonder or blame. He knew that his position was not 
simply a difficulty but an impossible one, and schooled himself 
to bear his destiny as well as he might, and report himself' 
only at Headquarters. 

He had grown gentle under this discipline. His hair was 
just beginning to be touched with silver, and his expression 
was that of habitual sadness and anxiety. He had no coun- 
selor, as we have seen, to turn to, who did not know either 
too much or too little. He had no heart to rest upon and 
into which he might unburden himself of the secrets and 
the sorrows that were aching in his own breast. Yet he had 
not allowed himself to run to waste in the long time since- 
he was left alone to his trials and fears. He had resisted’ 
the seductions which always beset solitary men with restless 
brains overwrought by depressing agencies. He disguised 
no misery to himself with the lying delusion of wine. He 
sought no sleep from narcotics, though he lay with throb- 
bing, wide-open eyes through all the weary hours of the- 
night. 

It was understood between Dudley Venner and old Doctor 
Kittredge that Elsie was a subject of occasional medical 


20 6 


ELSIE YENNER. 


observation, on account of certain mental peculiarities which 
might end in a permanent affection of her reason. Beyond 
this nothing was said, whatever may have been in the mind 
of either. But Dudley Yenner had studied Elsie’s case in 
the light of all the books he could find which might do any- 
thing towards explaining it. As in all cases where men 
meddle with medical science for a special purpose, having 
no previous acquaintance with it, his imagination found 
what it wanted in the books he read, and adjusted it to the 
facts before him. So it was he came to cherish those two 
fancies before alluded to: that the ominous birth-mark she 
had carried from infancy might fade and become obliterated, 
and that the age of complete maturity might be signalized 
by an entire change in her physical and mental state. He 
held these vague hopes as all of us nurse our only half- 
believed illusions. Hot for the world would he have ques- 
tioned his sagacious old medical friend as to the probability 
or possibility of their being true. We are very shy of asking 
questions of those who know enough to destroy with one 
word the hopes we live on. 

In this life of comparative seclusion to which the father 
had doomed himself for the sake of his child, he had found 
time for large and varied reading. The learned Judge 
Thornton confessed himself surprised at the extent of Dud- 
ley Yenner’s information. Doctor Kittredge found that he 
was in advance of him in the knowledge of recent physiologi- 
cal discoveries. He had taken pains to become acquainted 
with agricultural chemistry; and the neighboring farmers 
owed him some useful hints about the management of their 
land. He renewed his old acquaintance with the classic 
authors. He loved to warm his pulses with Homer and calm 
them down with Horace. He received all manner of new 
books and periodicals, and gradually gained an interest in 
the events of the passing time. Yet he remained almost 
a hermit, not absolutely refusing to see his neighbors, nor 
ever churlish towards them, but on the other hand not cul- 
tivating any intimate relations with them. 

He had retired from the world a young man, little more 
than a youth, indeed, with sentiments and aspirations all 
of them suddenly extinguished. The first had bequeathed 
him a single huge sorrow, the second a single trying duty. 
In due time the anguish had lost something of its poignancy, 


FROM WITHOUT AND FROM WITHIN. 207 

the light of earlier and happier memories had begun to 
struggle with and to soften its thick darkness, and even that 
duty which he had confronted with such an effort had be- 
come an endurable habit. 

At a period of life when many have been living on the 
capital of their acquired knowledge and their youthful stock 
of sensibilities, until their intellects are really shallower 
and their hearts emptier than they were at twenty, Dudley 
Venner was stronger in thought and tenderer in soul than 
in the first freshness of his youth, when he counted but half 
his present years. He had entered that period which marks 
the decline of men who have ceased growing in knowledge 
and strength: from forty to fifty a man must move upward, 
or the natural falling off in the vigor of life will carry him 
rapidly downward. At this time his inward nature was 
richer and deeper than in any earlier period of his life. If he 
could only be summoned to action, he was capable of noble 
service. If his sympathies could only find an outlet, he was 
never so capable of love as now; for his natural affections 
had been gathering in the course of all these years, and the 
traces of that ineffaceable calamity of his life were softened 
and partially hidden by new growths of thought and feeling, 
.as the wreck left by a mountain-side is covered over by the 
gentle intrusion of the soft-stemmed herbs which will pre- 
pare it for the stronger vegetation that will bring it once 
more into harmony with the peaceful slopes around it. 

Perhaps Dudley Venner had not gained so much in 
worldly wisdom as if he had been more in society and less 
in his study. The indulgence with which he treated his 
nephew was, no doubt, imprudent. A man more in the 
habit of dealing with men would have been more guarded 
with a person with Dick’s questionable story and unquestion- 
able physiognomy. But he was singularly unsuspicious, and 
his natural kindness was an additional motive to the wish for 
introducing some variety into the routine of Elsie’s life. 

If Dudley Venner did not know just what he wanted at 
this period of his life, there were a great many people in 
the town of Bockland who thought they did know. He had 
heen a widower long enough, — nigh twenty year, wa’n’t it? 
He’d been aout to Spraowle’s party,— there wa’n’t anything 
to hender him why he shouldn’t stir raound l’k other folks. 
What was the reason he didn’t go abaout to taown-meetin’s 


208 


ELSIE VENNER. 


V Sahbath-meetin’s, ’n’ lyceums, ’n’ schoool-’xaminations, ’n r 
s’prise-parties, ’n’ funerals, — and other entertainments where 
the still-faced two-story folks were in the habit of looking 
round to see if any of the mansion-house gentry were pres- 
ent? — Fac’ was, he was livin’ too lonesome daown there at 
the mansion-haouse. Why shouldn’t he make up to the 
Jedge’s daughter? She was genteel enough for him and — 
let’s see, haow old was she? Seven-’n’-twenty, — no, six-’n’- 
twenty, — born the same year we buried aour little Anny 
Mari’. 

There was no possible objection to this arrangement, if 
the parties interested had seen fit to make it or even to 
think of it. But “ Portia,” as some of the mansion-house 
people called her, did not happen to awaken the elective affini- 
ties of the lonely widower. He met her once in a while, and 
said to himself that she was a good specimen of the grand 
style of woman; and then the image came back to him of a 
woman not quite so large, not quite so imperial in her port, 
not quite so incisive in her speech, not quite so judicial in 
her opinions, but with two or three more joints in her frame, 
and two or three soft inflections in her voice, which for 
«ome absurd reason or other drew him to her side and so 
bewitched him that he told her half his secrets and looked 
into her eyes all that he could not tell, in less time than 
it would have taken him to discuss the champion paper of 
the last Quarterly with the admirable “ Portia.” Heu, 
quanto minus! How much more was that lost image to, 
him than all it left on earth! 

The study of love is very much like that of meteorology. 
We know that just about so much rain will fall in a season; 
but on what particular day it will shower is more than we 
can tell. We know that just about so much love will be 
made every year in a given population; but who will rain 
his young affections upon the heart of whom is not known 
except to the astrologers and fortune-tellers. And why rain 
falls as it does, and why love is made just as it is, are equally 
puzzling questions. 

The woman a man loves is always his own daughter, far' 
more his daughter than the female children born to him 
by the common law of life. It is not the outside woman, 
who takes his name, that he loves: before her image ha& 
reached the center of his consciousness, it has passed through^ 


FROM WITHOUT AND FROM WITHIN. 209 

'fifty many-layered nerve-strainers, been churned over by ten 
thousand pulse-beats, and reacted upon by millions of lateral 
impulses which bandy it about through the mental spaces 
as a reflection is sent back and forward in a saloon lined 
with mirrors. With this altered image of the woman before 
him, his preexisting ideal becomes blended. The object of 
his love is in part the offspring of her legal parents, but 
mote of her lover’s brain. The difference between the real 
and the ideal objects of love must not exceed a fixed maxi- 
mum. The heart’s vision cannot unite them stereoscopically 
into a single image, if the divergence passes certain limits. 
A formidable analogy, much in the nature of a proof, with 
very serious consequences, which moralists and match- 
makers would do well to remember ! Double vision with the 
*eyes of the heart is a dangerous physiological state, and may 
lead to missteps and serious falls. 

Whether Dudley Venner would ever find a breathing 
image near enough' to his ideal one, to fill the desolate 
•chamber of his heart, or not, was very doubtful. Some 
gracious and gentle woman, whose influence would steal 
upon him as the first low words of prayer after that interval 
of silent mental supplication known to one of our simpler 
forms of public worship, gliding into his consciousness with- 
out hurting its old griefs, herself knowing the chastening 
of sorrow, and subdued into sweet acquiescence with the 
Divine will, — some such woman as this, if Heaven should 
send him such, might call him back to the world of happi- 
ness, from which he seemed forever exiled. He could never 
again be the young lover who walked through the garden- 
alleys all red with roses in the old dead and buried June of 
long ago. He could never forget the bride of his youth, 
whose image, growing phantom-like with the lapse of years, 
hovered over him like a dream while waking and like a 
reality in dreams. But if it might be in God’s good provi- 
dence that this desolate life should come under the influence 
of human affections once more, what an ecstasy of renewed 
existence was in store for him! His life had not all been 
buried under that narrow ridge of turf with the white stone 
at its head. It seemed so for a while; but it was not and 
eould not and ought not to be so. His first passion had 
been a true and pure one; there was no spot or stain upon 
it. With all his grief there blended no cruel recollection 


210 


ELSIE VENNER. 


of any word or look he would have wished to forget. All 
those little differences, such as young married people 'frith 
any individual flavor in their characters must have, if they 
are tolerably mated, had only added to the music of exist- 
ence, as the lesser discords admitted into some perfect sym- 
phony, fitly resolved, add richness and strength to the whole 
harmonious movement. It was a deep wound that Fate had 
inflicted on him; nay, it seemed like a mortal one; but the: 
weapon was clean, and its edge was smooth. Such wounds 
must heal with time in healthy natures, whatever a false 
sentiment may say, by the wise and beneficent law of our 
being. The recollection of a deep and true affection is 
rather a divine nourishment for a life to grow strong upon 
than a poison to destroy it. 

Dudley Vernier’s habitual sadness could not be laid wholly 
to his early bereavement. It was partly the result of the 
long struggle between natural affection and duty, on one 
side, and the involuntary tendencies these had to overcome, 
on the other, — between hope and fear, so long in conflict 
that despair itself would have been like an anodyne, and he 
would have slept upon some final catastrophe with the heavy- 
sleep of a bankrupt after his failure is proclaimed. Alas! 
some new affection might perhaps rekindle the fires of youth, 
in his heart ; but what power could calm that haggard terror 
of the parent which rose with every morning’s sun and 
watched with every evening star, — what power save alone- 
that of him who comes bearing the inverted torch, and leav- 
ing after him only the ashes printed with his footsteps ? 


. CHAPTER XXI. 


THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY. 

There was a good deal of interest felt, as has Been said, 
In the lonely condition of Dudley Venner in that fine man- 
sion-house of his, and with that strange daughter, who would 
never be married, as many people thought, in spite of all the 
stories. The feelings expressed by the good folks who dated 
from the time when they “ buried aour little Anny Mari’,” 
and others of that homespun stripe, were founded in reason, 
after all. And so it was natural enough that they should be 
•shared by various ladies, who, having conjugated the verb 
to live as far as the preterpluperfect tense, were ready to 
change one of its vowels and begin with it in the present 
indicative. Unfortunately, there was very little chance of 
showing sympathy in its active form for a gentleman who 
kept himself so much out of the way as the master of the 
Dudley Mansion. 

Various attempts had been made, from time to time, of 
late years, to get him out of his study, which had, for the 
most part, proved failures. It was a surprise, therefore, 
^when he was seen at the Great Party at the Colonel’s. But 
it was an encouragement to try him again, and the conse- 
quence had been that he had received a number of notes 
inviting him to various smaller entertainments, which, as 
neither he nor Elsie had any fancy for them, he had politely 
declined. 

Such was the state of things when he received an invita- 
tion to take tea sociably, with a few friends, at Hyacinth 
Cottage, the residence of the Widow Rowens, relict of the 
late Beeri Rowens, Esquire, better known as Major Rowens. 
Ala j or Rowens was at the time of his decease a promising 
officer in the militia, in the direct line of promotion, as his 
waistband was getting tighter every year; and, as all the 
world knows, the militia-officer who splits off most buttons 
and fills the largest sword-belt stands the best chance of 
rrising, or, perhaps we might say, spreading, to be General. 

211 


212 


ELSIE VENNER. 


Major Rowens united in his person certain other traits' 
which help a man to eminence in the branch of publie 
service referred to. He ran to high colors, to wide whiskers,, 
to open pores; he had the saddle-leather skin common in 
Englishmen, rarer in Americans, — never found in the Brah- 
min caste, oftener in the military and the commodores: ob- 
serving people know what is meant; blow the seed-arrows 
from the white-kid-looking button which holds them on a 
dandelion-stalk, and the pricked pincushion surface shows 
you what to look for. He had the loud, gruff voice which 
implies the right to command. He had the thick hand,, 
stubbed fingers, with bristled pads between their joints, 
square, broad thumb-nails, and sturdy limbs, which mark a 
constitution made to use in rough out-door work. He had 
the never-failing predilection for showy switch-tailed horses 
that step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were 
going to do something fearful the next minute, in the face 
of awed and admiring multitudes gathered at mighty mus- 
ters or imposing cattle-shows. He had no objection, either, 
to holding the reins in a wagon behind another kind of horse,. 
— a slouching, listless beast, with a strong slant to his shoul- 
der and a notable depth to his quarter and an emphatic 
angle at the hock, who commonly walked or lounged along 
in a lazy trot of five or six miles an hour; but, if a lively 
colt happened to* come rattling up alongside, or a brandy- 
faced old horse-jockey took the road to show off a fast nag, 
and threw his dust into the Major’s face, would pick his 
legs up all at once, and straighten his body out, and swing 
off into a three-minute gait, in a way that “ Old Blue” him- 
self need not have been ashamed of. 

For some reason which must be left to the next genera- 
tion of professors to find out, the men who are knowing in. 

horse-flesh have an eye also for, let a long dash separate 

the brute creation from the angelic being now to be named,. 
— for lovely woman. Of this fact there can be no possible- 
doubt; and therefore you shall notice, that, if a fast horse 
trots before two, one of the twain is apt to be a pretty bit 
of muliebrity, with shapes to her, and eyes flying about in 
all directions. 

Major Rowens, at that time Lieutenant of the Rockland 
Eusileers, had driven and “ traded ” horses not a few before- 
he turned his acquired skill as a judge of physical advan- 


THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY. 213 


tages in another direction. He knew a neat, snug hoof, a 
delicate pastern, a broad haunch, a deep chest, a close ribbed- 
up barrel, as well as any other man in the town. He was 
not to be taken in by your thick-jointed, heavy-headed cattle, 
without any go to them, that suit a country-parson, nor yet 
by the “ galinted-up,” long-legged animals, with all their con- 
stitutions bred out of them, such as rich greenhorns buy 
and cover up with their plated trappings. 

Whether his equine experience was of any use to him in 
the selection 6f the mate with whom he was to go in double 
Harness so long as they both should live, we need not stop 
to question. At any rate, nobody could find fault with the 
jpoints of Miss Marilla Van Deusen, to whom he offered the 
privilege of becoming Mrs. Rowens. The Van must have 
Heen crossed out of her blood, for she was an out-and-out 
brunette, with hair and eyes black enough for a Mohawk’s 
daughter. A fine style of woman, with very striking tints 
und outlines, — an excellent match for the Lieutenant, except 
for one thing. She was marked by Nature for a widow. She 
was evidently got up for mourning, and never looked so 
well as in deep black, with jet ornaments. 

The man who should dare to marry her would doom him- 
self ; for how could she become the widow she was bound to 
He, unless he would retire and give her a chance ? The Lieu- 
tenant lived, however, as we have seen, to become Captain 
-and then Major, with prospects of further advancement. 
Hut Mrs. Rowens often said she should never look well in 
colors. At last her destiny fulfilled itself, and the justice of 
Nature was vindicated. Major Rowens got overheated gal- 
loping about the field on the day of the Great Muster, and 
had a rush of blood to the head, according to the common 
report, — at any rate, something which stopped him short in 
his career of expansion and promotion, and established Mrs. 
Rowens in her normal condition of widowhood. 

The Widow Rowens was now in the full bloom of orna- 
mental sorrow. A very shallow crape bonnet, frilled and 
froth-like, allowed the parted raven hair to show its glossy 
smoothness. A jet pin heaved upon her bosom with every 
sigh of memory, or emotion of unknown origin. Jet brace- 
lets shone with every movement of her slender hands, cased 
in close-fitting black gloves. Her sable dress was rigid with 
manifold flounces, from beneath which a small foot showed 


214 


ELSIE VENNER. 


itself from time to time, clad in the same hue of mournings 
Everything about her was dark, except the whites of her 
eyes and the enamel of her teeth. The effect was complete- 
Gray’s Elegy was not a more perfect composition. 

Much as the Widow was pleased with the costume belong- 
ing to her condition, she did not disguise from herself that 
under certain circumstances she might be willing to change 
her name again. Thus, for instance, if a gentleman not too 
far gone in maturity, of dignified exterior, ^yith an ample 
fortune, and of unexceptionable character, should happen 
to set his heart upon her, and the only way to make him 
happy was to give up her weeds and go into those unbecom- 
ing colors again for his sake, — why, she felt that it was in 
her nature to make the sacrifice. By a singular coincidence 
it happened that a gentleman was now living in Rockland 
who united in himself all these advantages. Who he was,, 
the sagacious reader may very probably have divined. Just, 
to see how it looked, one day, having bolted her door, and 
drawn the curtains close, and glanced under the sofa, and 
listened at the keyhole to be sure there was nobody in the 
entry,^just to see how it looked, she had taken out am 
envelope and written on the back of it Mrs. Marilla Venner. 
It made her head swim and her knees tremble. What if she 
should faint, or die, or have a stroke of palsy, and they 
should break into the room and find that name written? 
How she caught it up and tore it into little shreds, and 
then could not be easy until she had burned the small heap 
of pieces! But these are things which every honorable 
reader will consider imparted in strict confidence. 

The Widow Rowens, though not of the mansion-house set, 
was among the most genteel of the two-story circle, and was 
in the habit of visiting some of the great people. In one 
of these visits she met a dashing young fellow with an olive 
complexion at the house of a professional gentleman who 
had married, one of the white necks and pairs of fat arms 
from a distinguished family before referred to. The pro- 
fessional gentleman himself was out, but the lady intro- 
duced the olive-complexioned young man as Mr. Richard 
Venner. 

The Widow was particularly pleased with this accidental 
meeting. Had heard Mr. Vernier’s name frequently men- 
tioned. Hoped his uncle was well, and his charming cousin, 


THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY. 215' 

— was she as original as ever? Had often admired that 
charming creature he rode: we had had some fine horses. 
Had never got over her taste for riding, but could find no- 
body that liked a good long gallop since well— ^she 

couldn’t help wishing she was alongside of him, the other 
day, when she saw him dashing by, just at twilight. 

The Widow paused; lifted a flimsy handkerchief with a 
very deep black border so as to play the jet bracelet; pushed 
the tip of her slender foot beyond the lowest of her black 
flounces; looked up; looked down; looked at Mr. Richard, 
the very picture of artless simplicity, — as represented in 
well-played genteel comedy. 

“ A good bit of stuff,” Dick said to himself, — “ and some- 
thing of it left yet; caramba ! ” The Major had not studied 
points for nothing, and the Widow was one of the right 
sort. The young man had been a little restless of late, and 
was willing to vary his routine by picking up an acquaint- 
ance here and there. So he took the Widow’s hint. He 
should like to have a scamper of half a dozen miles with her 
some fine morning. 

The Widow was infinitely obliged; was not sure that she 
could find any horse in the village to suit her; but it was 
so kind in him ! Would he not call at Hyacinth Cottage, and 
let her thank him again there? 

Thus began an acquaintance which the Widow made the 
most of, and on the strength of which she determined to 
give a tea-party apd invite a number of persons of whom 
we know something already. She took a half-sheet of note- 
paper and made out her list as carefully as a country “ mer- 
chant’s ” “ clerk ” adds up two and threepence (Hew Eng- 
land momenclature) and tw T elve and a half cents, figure by 
figure, and fraction by fraction, before he can be sure they 
will make half a dollar, without cheating somebody. After 
much consideration the list reduced itself to the following 
names: Mr. Richard Venner and Mrs. Blanche Creamer, 
the lady at whose house she had met him, — mansion-house 
breed, — but will come,— soft on Dick; Dudley Venner, — 
take care of him herself ; Elsie, — Dick will see to her, — won’t 
it fidget the Creamer woman to see him round her? the old 
Doctor, — he’s always handy; and there’s that young master 
there, up at the school, — know him well enough to ask him, 
— oh, yes, he’ll come. One, two, three, four, five, six, — seven; 


216 


ELSIE VENNER. 


not room enough, without the leaf in the table; one place 
empty, if the leaf’s in. Let’s see, — Helen Darley, — she’ll do 
well enough to fill it up, — why, yes, just the thing, — light 
brown hair, blue eyes, — won’t my pattern show off well 
against her? Put her down, — she’s worth her tea and toast 
ten times over, — nobody knows what a “ thunder-and-light- 
ning woman,” as poor Major used to have it, is, till she gets 
alongside of one of those old-maidish girls, with hair the 
color of brown sugar, and eyes like the blue of a teacup. 

The Widow smiled with a feeling of triumph at having 
overcome her difficulties and arranged her party, — arose and 
stood before her glass, three-quarters front, one-quarter 
profile, so as to show the whites of the eyes and the down of 
the upper lip. “ Splendid ! ” said the Widow, — and to tell 
the truth, she was not far out of the way, and with Helen 
Harley as a foil anybody would know that she must be 
foudroyant and pyramidal, — if these French adjectives may 
be naturalized for this one particular exigency. 

So the Widow sent out her notes. The black grief which 
had filled her heart and overflowed in surges of crape around 
her person had left a deposit half an inch wide at the margin 
of her note-paper. Her seal was a small youth with an in- 
verted torch, the same on which Mrs. Blanche Creamer made 
her spiteful remark, that she expected to see that boy of the 
Widow’s standing on his head yet; meaning, as Dick sup- 
posed, that she would get the torch right-side up as soon as 
she had a chance. That was after Dick had made the Wid- 
ow’s acquaintance, and Mrs. Creamer had got it into her 
foolish head that she would marry that young fellow, if she 
could catch him. How could he ever come to fancy such 
a quadroon-looking thing as that, she should like to 
know ? 

It is easy enough to ask seven people to a party; but 
whether they will come or not is an open question, as it was 
in the case of the spirits of the vasty deep. If the note issues 
from a three-story mansion-house, and goes to two-story ac- 
quaintances, they will all be in an excellent state* of health, 
and have much pleasure in accepting this very polite invi- 
tation. If the note is from the lady of a two-story family 
to three-story ones, the former highly respectable person 
will very probably find that an endemic complaint is prev- 
alent, not represented in the weekly bills of mortality, which 


THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY. 2 IT 

occasions numerous regrets in the bosoms of eminently de- 
sirable parties that they cannot have the pleasure of and- 
so-forthing. 

In this case there was room for doubt, — mainly as to- 
whether Elsie would take a fancy to come or not. If she 
should come, her father would certainly be with her. Dick 
had promised, and thought he could bring Elsie. Of course 
the young schoolmaster will come, and that poor, tired-out 
looking Helen, — if only to get out of sight of those horrid 
Peckham wretches. They don’t get such invitations every 
day. The others she felt sure of, — all but the old Doctor, — 
he might have some horrid patient or other to visit; tell 
him Elsie Vernier’s going to be there, — he always likes to 
have an eye on her, they say, — oh, he’d come fast enough, 
without any more coaxing. 

She wanted the Doctor, particularly. It was odd, but she- 
was afraid of Elsie. She felt as if she should be safe 
enough, if the old Doctor were there to see to the girl; and 
then she should have leisure to devote herself more freely 
to the young lady’s father, for whom all her sympathies were- 
in a state of lively excitement. 

It was a long time since the Widow had seen so many 
persons round her table as she had now invited. Better have 
the plates set and see how they will fill it up with the leaf 
in. — A little too scattering with only eight plates set; if she- 
could find two more people, now, that would bring the chairs 
a little closer, — snug, you know,— which makes the company 
sociable. The Widow thought over her acquaintances. Why! 
how stupid ! there was her good minister, the same who had 
married her, and might — might — bury her for aught she 
knew, and his granddaughter staying with him, — nice little- 
girl, pretty, and not old enough to be dangerous ; — f or the 
Widow had no notion of making a tea-party and asking- 
people to it that would be like to stand between her and 
any little project she might happen to have on anybody’s 
heart, — not she! It was all right now; — Blanche was mar- 
ried and so forth ; Letty was a child ; Elsie was his daughter ; 
Helen Darley was a nice, worthy drudge, — poor thing! — 
faded, faded, — colors wouldn’t wash, — just what she wanted 
to show off against. How, if the Dudley mansion-house 
people would only come, — that was the great point. 

“ Here’s a note for us, Elsie,” said her father as they safe 


218 


ELSIE VENNER. 


round the breakfast-table. “ Mrs. Eowens wants us all to 
come to tea.” 

It was one of “ Elsie’s days,” as Old Sophy called them. 
The light in her eyes was still, but very bright. She looked 
up so full of perverse and willful impulses, that Dick knew 
he could make her go with him and her father. He had his 
own motives for bringing her to this determination, — and 
his own way of setting about it. 

“ I don’t want to go,” he said. “ What do you say, 
Uncle?” 

“ To tell the truth, Richard, I don’t much fancy the Ma- 
jor’s widow. I don’t like to see her weeds flowering out 
quite so strong. I suppose you don’t care about going, 
.Elsie?” 

Elsie looked up in her father’s face with an expression 
which he knew but too well. She was just in the state which 
the plain sort of people call “ contrary,” when they have to 
deal with it in animals. She would insist on going to that 
tea-party; he knew it just as well before she spoke as after 
she had spoken. If Dick had said he wanted to go and her 
father had seconded his wishes, she would have insisted on 
staying at home. It was no great matter, her father said to 
himself, after all; very likely it would amuse her; the Widow 
was a lively woman enough, — perhaps a little comme il ne 
faut pas socially, compared with the Thorntons and some 
other families; but what did he care for these petty village 
distinctions? 

Elsie spoke. 

“ I mean to go. You must go with me, Dudley. You may 
do as you like, Dick.” 

That settled the Dudley-mansion business, of course. 
They all three accepted, as fortunately did all the others 
who had been invited. 

Hyacinth Cottage was a pretty place enough, a little too 
much choked round with bushes, and too much overrun with 
climbing-roses, which, in the season of slugs and rose-bugs, 
were apt to show so brown about the leaves and so coleop- 
terous about the flowers, that it might be questioned whether 
their buds and blossoms made up for these unpleasant animal 
combinations, — especially as the smell of whale-oil soap was 
"very commonly in the ascendant over that of the roses. It 
Rad its patch of grass called “the lawn,” and its glazed 


THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY. 219 * 


closet known as “ the conservatory,” according to that sys- 
tem of harmless fictions characteristic of the rural imagi- 
nation and shown in the names applied to many familiar 
objects. The interior of the cottage was more tasteful and 
ambitious than that of the ordinary two-story dwellings* 
In place of the prevailing hair-cloth-covered furniture, the 
visitor had the satisfaction of seating himself upon a chair 
covered with some of the Widow’s embroidery, or a sofa lux- 
urious with soft caressing plush. The sporting tastes of the- 
late Major showed in various prints on the wall: Herring’s 
“ Plenipotentiary,” the “ red bullock ” of the ’34 Derby ; 
“ Cadland ” and “The Colonel”; “Crucifix”; “West- Aus- 
tralian,” fastest of modern racers; and among native celeb- 
rities, ugly, game old “ Boston,” with his straight neck and 
ragged hips ; and gray “ Lady Suffolk,” queen, in her day, 
not of the turf but of the track, “ extending ” herself till she- 
measured a rod, more or less, skimming along within a yard 
of the ground, her legs opening and shutting under her with 
a snap, like the four blades of a compound jack-knife. 

These pictures were much more refreshing than those- 
dreary fancy death-bed scenes, common in two-story country- 
houses, in which Washington and other distinguished per- 
sonages are represented as obligingly devoting their last 
moments to taking a prominent part in a tableau, in which 
weeping relatives, attached servants, professional assistants, 
and celebrated personages who might by a stretch of imagi- 
nation be supposed present, are grouped in the most ap- 
proved style of arrangement about the chief actor’s pillow. 

A single glazed bookcase held the family library, which 
was hidden from vulgar eyes by green silk curtains behind 
the glass. It would have been instructive to get a look at 
it, as it always is to peep into one’s neighbor’s bookshelves. 
From other sources and opportunities a partial idea of it 
has been obtained. The Widow had inherited some books 
from her mother, who was something of a reader: Young’s 
“Night-Thoughts”; “The Preceptor”; “The Task, a 
Poem,” by William Cowper; Hervey’s “Meditations”; 
“Alonzo and Melissa”; “Buccaneers of America”; “The 
Triumphs of Temper ” ; “ La Belle Assemblee ” ; Thomson’s 
“Seasons”; and a few others. The Major had brought in 
“Tom Jones” and “Peregrine Pickle”; various works by 
Mr. Pierce Egan ; “ Boxiana ” ; “ The Racing Calendar ” x 


220 


ELSIE VEKNER. 


and a “ Book of Lively Songs and Jests.” The Widow had 
added the Poems of Lord Byron and T. Moore; “Eugene 
Aram ” ; “ The Tower of London,” by Harrison Ainsworth ; 
^some of Scott’s Hovels; “The Pickwick Papers”; a volume 
of Plays, by W. Shakspere; “Proverbial Philosophy”; 

Pilgrim’s Progress ” ; “ The Whole Duty of Man ” (a pres- 
ent when she was married) ; with two celebrated religious 
works, one by William Law and the other by Philip Dod- 
dridge, which were sent her after her husband’s death, and 
which she had tried to read, but found that they did not 
agree with her. Of course the bookcase held a few school 
manuals and compendiums, and one of Mr. Webster’s Dic- 
tionaries. But the gilt-edged Bible always lay on the center- 
table, next to the magazine with the fashion-plates and the 
scrap-book with pictures from old annuals and illustrated 
papers. 

The reader need not apprehend the recital, at full length, 
of such formidable preparations for the Widow’s tea-party 
as were required in the case of Colonel Sprowle’s Social 
Entertainment. A tea-party, even in the country, is a com- 
paratively simple and economical piece of business. As soon 
as the Widow found that all her company were coming, she 
set to work, with the aid of her “ smart ” maidservant and 
a daughter of her own, who was beginning to stretch and 
spread at a fearful rate, but whom she treated as a small 
child, to make the necessary preparations. The silver had 
to be rubbed ; also the grand plated urn, — her mother’s be- 
fore hers, — style of the Empire, — looking as if it might have 
been made to hold the Major’s ashes. Then came the mak- 
ing and baking of cake and gingerbread, the smell whereof 
reached even as far as the sidewalk in front of the cottage, 
so that small boys returning from school snuffed it in the 
breeze, and discoursed with each other on its suggestions; 
so that the Widow Leech, who happened to pass, remembered 
she hadn’t called on Marilly Raowens for a consid’ble spell, 
and turned in at the gate and rang three times with long 
intervals, — but all in vain, the inside Widow having “ spot- 
ted ” the outside one through the blinds, and whispered to 
Tier aides-de-camp to let the old thing ring away till she 
pulled the bell out by the roots, but not to stir to open the 
*door. 

Widow Rowens was what they called a real smart, capable 


THE WIDOW HO WENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY. 221 


■woman, not very great on books, perhaps, but knew what was . 
what and who was who as well as another, — knew how to 
make the little cottage look pretty, how to set out a tea-table, . 
and, what a good many women never can find out, knew her 
own style and “ got herself up tip-top,” as our young friend 
Master Geordie, Colonel Sprowle’s heir-apparent, remarked 
to his friend from one of the fresh-water colleges. Flowers 
were abundant now, and she had dressed her rooms tastefully 
with them. The center-table had two or three gilt-edged 
books lying carelessly about on it, and some prints, and a 
stereoscope with stereographs to match, chiefly groups of 
picnics, weddings, etc., in which the same somewhat fa- 
tigued-looking ladies of fashion and brides received the at- 
tentions of the same unpleasant-looking young men, easily 
identified under their different disguises, consisting of fash- 
ionable raiment such as gentlemen are supposed to wear 
habitually. With these, however, were some pretty English 
scenes, — pretty except for the old fellow with the hanging 
under-lip who infests every one of that interesting series; 
and a statue or two, especially that famous one commonly 
called the Lahcoon, so as to rhyme with moon and spoon,, 
and representing an old man with his two sons in the em- 
braces of two monstrous serpents. 

There is no denying that it was a very dashing achieve- 
ment of the Widow’s to bring together so considerable a 
number of desirable guests. She felt proud of her feat ; but 
as to the triumph of getting Dudley Venner to come out for 
a visit to Hyacinth Cottage, she was surprised and almost 
frightened at her own success. So much might depend on 
the impressions of that evening! 

The next thing was to be sure that everybody should be 
in the right place at the tea-table, and this the Widow 
thought she could manage by a few words to the older guests 
and a little shuffling about and shifting when they got to 
the table. 

To settle everything the Widow made out a diagram, 
which the reader should have a chance of inspecting 
in an authentic copy, if these pages were allowed under any 
circumstances to be the vehicle of illustrations. If, however, . 
he or she really wishes to see the way the pieces stood as they 
were placed at the beginning of the game, (the Widow’s, 
gambit,) he or she had better at once take a sheet of paper,. 


322 


ELSIE YENNER. 


draw an oval, and arrange the characters according to the 
following schedule. 

At the head of the table, the Hostess, Widow Manila 
Rowens. Opposite her, at the other end, Rev. Dr. Honey- 
wood. At the right of the Hostess, Dudley Yenner, next him 
Helen Darley, next her Dr. Kittredge, next him Mrs. 
Blanche Creamer, then the Reverend Doctor. At the left of 
the Hostess, Bernard Langdon, next him Betty Forrester, 
next Betty Mr. Richard Yenner, next to him Elsie, and so to 
the Reverend Doctor again. 

The company came together a little before the early hour 
at which it was customary to take tea in Rockland. The 
Widow knew everybody, of course: who was there in Rock- 
land she did not know? But some of them had to be intro- 
duced: Mr. Richard Yenner to Mr. Bernard, Mr. Bernard 
to Miss Betty, Dudley Yenner to Miss Helen Darley, and so 
on. The two young men looked each other straight in the 
eyes, — both full of youthful life, but one of frank and fear- 
less aspect, the other with a dangerous feline beauty alien 
to the Hew England half of his blood. 

The guests talked, turned over the prints, looked at the 
flowers, opened the “ Proverbial Philosophy ” with gilt edges, 
and the volume of Plays by W. Shakspere, examined the 
horse-pictures on the walls, and so passed away the time until 
tea was announced, when they paired off for the room where 
it was in readiness. The Widow had managed it well; every- 
thing was just as she wanted it. Dudley Yenner was be- 
tween herself and the poor tired-looking schoolmistress with 
her faded colors. Blanche Creamer, a lax, tumble-to-pieces, 
Greuze-ish looking blonde, whom the Widow hated because 
the men took to her, was purgatoried between the two old 
Doctors, and could see all the looks that passed between Dick 
Yenner and his cousin. The young schoolmaster could talk 
to Miss Betty: it was his business to know how to talk to 
schoolgirls. Dick would amuse himself with his cousin 
Elsie. The old Doctors only wanted to be well fed and they 
would do well enough. 

It would be very pleasant to describe the tea-table; but 
in reality, it did not pretend to offer a plethoric banquet 
to the guests. The Widow had not visited at the mansion- 
houses for nothing, and she had learned there that an over- 
loaded tea-table may do well enough for farm-hands when 


THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY. 223 


They come in at evening from their work and sit down un- 
washed in their shirt-sleeves, but that for decently bred 
people such an insult to the memory of a dinner not yet 
half-assimilated is wholly inadmissible. Everything was 
delicate, and almost everything of fair complexion: white 
bread and biscuits, frosted and sponge cake, cream, honey, 
straw-colored butter; only a shadow here and there, where 
the fire had crisped and browned the surfaces of a stack of 
dry toast, or where a preserve had brought away some of the 
red sunshine of the last year’s summer. The Widow shall 
have the credit of her well-ordered tea-table, also of her 
bountiful cream-pitchers; for it is well known that city- 
people find cream a very scarce luxury in a good many 
country-houses of more pretensions than Hyacinth Cottage. 
There are no better maxims for ladies who give tea-parties 
than these: — 

Cream is thicker than water. 

Large heart never loved little cream-pot. 

There is a common feeling in genteel families that the 
third meal of the day is not so essential a part of the daily 
bread as to require any especial acknowledgment to the Provi- 
dence which bestows it. Very devout people, who would 
never sit down to a breakfast or a dinner without the grace 
before meat which honors the Giver of it, feel as if they 
thanked Heaven enough for their tea and toast by partaking 
of them cheerfully without audible petition or ascription. 
But the Widow was not exactly mansion-house-bred, and so 
thought it necessary to give the Reverend Doctor a peculiar 
look which he understood at once as inviting his professional 
services. He, therefore, uttered a few simple words of grati- 
tude, very quietly, — much to the satisfaction of some of the 
.guests, who had expected one of those elaborate effusions, 
with rolling up of the eyes and rhetorical accents, so fre- 
quent' with eloquent divines when they address their Maker 
in genteel company. 

Everybody began talking with the person sitting next at 
hand. Mr. Bernard naturally enough turned his attention 
first to the Widow; but somehow or other the right side of 
the Widow seemed to be more wide awake than the left side, 
next him, and he resigned her to the courtesies of Mr. Dud- 
ley Venner, directing himself, not very unwillingly, to the 
,young girl next him on the other side. Miss Letty Forrester. 


224 


ELSIE VENNER. 


the granddaughter of the Reverend Doctor, was city-bred* 
as anybody might see, and city-dressed, as any woman would*, 
know at sight; a man might only feel the general effect of 
clear, well-matched colors, of harmonious proportions, of the 
cut which makes everything cling like a bather’s sleeve where 
a natural outline is to be kept, and ruffle itself up like the 
hackle of a pitted fighting-cock where art has a right to 
luxuriate in silken exuberance. How this city-bred and city- 
dressed girl came to be in Rockland Mr. Bernard did not 
know, but he knew at any rate that she was his next neigh- 
bor and entitled to his courtesies. She was handsome, too, 
when he came to look, very handsome when he came to look 
again, — endowed with that city beauty which is like the; 
beauty of wall-fruit, something finer in certain respects than 
can be reared off the pavement. 

The miserable routinists who keep repeating invidiously 
Cowper’s 

“ God made the country and man made the town,” 

as if the town were a place to kill out the race in, do not 
know what they are talking about. Where could they raise 
such Saint-Michael pears, such Saint-Germains, such Brown 
Burres, as we had until within a few years growing within 
the walls of our old city-gardens? Is the dark and damp, 
cavern where a ragged beggar hides himself better than a 
town-mansion which fronts the sunshine and backs on its 
own cool shadow, with gas and water and all appliances to 
suit all needs? God made the cavern and man made the- 
house ! What then ? 

There is no doubt that the pavement keeps a deal of mis- 
chief from coming up out of the earth, and, with a dash off 
of it in summer, just to cool the soles of the feet when it 
gets too hot, is the best place for many constitutions, as some 
few practical people have already discovered. And just so 
these beauties that grow and ripen against the city-walls, 
these young fellows with cheeks like peaches and young girls- 
with cheeks like nectarines, show that the most perfect forms 
of artificial life can do as much for the human product as 
garden-culture for strawberries and blackberries. 

If Mr. Bernard had philosophized or prosed in this way,, 
with so pretty, nay, so lovely a neighbor as Miss Letty For- 
rester waiting for him to speak to her, he would have to be^ 


THE WIDOW RO WENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY. 225 


•dropped from this narrative as a person unworthy of his 
.good fortune, and not deserving the kind reader’s further 
notice. On the contrary, he no sooner set his eyes fairly on 
.her than he said to himself that she was charming, and that 
he wished she were one of his scholars at the Institute. So 
.he began talking with her in an easy way ; for he knew some- 
thing of young girls by this time, and, of course, could adapt 
himself to a young lady who looked as if she might be not 
more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and therefore could 
hardly be a match in intellectual resources for the seventeen 
and eighteen year-old first-class scholars of the Apollinean 
Institute. But city-wall-fruit ripens early, and he soon 
found that this girl’s training had so sharpened her wits 
and stored her memory, that he need not be at the trouble 
:to stoop painfully in order to come down to her level. 

The beauty of good-breeding is that it adjusts itself to all 
relations without effort, true to itself always, however the 
manners of those around it may change. Self-respect and 
respect for others, — the sensitive consciousness poises itself 
in these as the compass in the ship’s binnacle balances itself 
und maintains its true level within the two concentric rings 
which suspend it on their pivots. This thorough-bred 
: schoolgirl quite enchanted Mr. Bernard. He could not un- 
derstand where she got her style, her way of dress, her enun- 
ciation, her easy manners. The minister was a most worthy 
gentleman, but this was not the Bocldand native-born man- 
ner; some new element had come in between the good, plain, 
worthy man and this young girl, fit to be a Crown Prince’s 
partner where there were a thousand to choose from. 

He looked across to Helen Darley, for he knew she would 
understand the glance of admiration with which he called 
her attention to the young beauty at his side; and Helen 
knew what a young girl could be, as compared with what too 
many a one is, as well as anybody. 

This poor, dear Helen of ours! How admirable the con- 
trast between her and the Widow on the other side of Dudley 
Yenner ! But, what was very odd, that gentleman apparently 
thought the contrast was to the advantage of this poor, dear 
Helen. At any rate, instead of devoting himself solely to 
the Widow, he happened to be just at that moment talking 
In a very interested and, apparently, not uninteresting way 
.to his right-hand neighbor, who, on her part, never looked 


226 


ELSIE VENNER. 


more charmingly, — as Mr. Bernard could not help saying to 
himself, — but, to be sure, he had just been looking at the 
young girl next him, so that his eyes were brimful of beauty, 
and may have spilled some of it on the first comer : for you 
know M. Becquerel has been showing us lately how every- 
thing is phosphorescent ; that it soaks itself with light in an 
instant’s exposure, so that it is wet with liquid sunbeams, or, 
if you will, tremulous with luminous vibrations, when first 
plunged into the negative bath of darkness, and betrays it- 
self by the light which escapes from its surface. 

Whatever were the reason, this poor, dear Helen never 
looked so sweetly. Her plainly parted brown hair, her meek, 
blue eyes, her cheek just a little tinged with color, the almost 
sad simplicity of her dress, and that look he knew so well, — 
so full of cheerful patience, so sincere, that he had trusted 
her from the first moment as the believers of the larger half 
of Christendom trust the Blessed Virgin, — Mr. Bernard took 
this all in at a glance, and felt as pleased as if it had been 
his own sister Dorothea Elizabeth that he was looking at- 
As for Dudley Venner, Mr. Bernard could not help being 
struck by the animated expression of his countenance. It: 
certainly showed great kindness, on his part, to pay so much 
attention to this quiet girl, when he had the thunder-and- 
lightning Widow on the other side of him. 

Mrs. Marilla Bowens did not know what to make of it- 
She had made her tea-party expressly for Mr. Dudley Ven- 
ner. She had placed him just as she wanted, between herself 
and a meek, delicate woman who dressed in gray, wore a 
plain breastpin with hair in it, who taught a pack of girls, 
up there at the school, and looked as if she were born for a 
teacher, — the very best foil that she could have chosen; and 
here was this man, polite enough to herself, to be sure, but 
turning round to that very undistinguished young person, 
as if he rather preferred her conversation of the two ! 

The truth was that Dudley Venner and Helen Darley met 
as two travelers might meet in the desert, wearied, both of 
them, with their long journey, one having food, but no 
water, the other water, but no food. Each saw that the 
other had been in long conflict with some trial; for their 
voices were low and tender, as patiently borne sorrow and 
humbly uttered prayers make every human voice. Through 
these tones, more than by what they said, they came into 


THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY. 227 


natural sympathetic relations with each other. Nothing 
could be more unstudied. As for Dudley Venner, no beauty 
in all the world could have so soothed and magnetized him 
as the very repose and subdued gentleness which the Widow 
had thought would make the best possible background for her 
own more salient and effective attractions. No doubt, Helen, 
on her side, was almost too readily pleased with the confi- 
dence this new acquaintance she was making seemed to show 
Per from the very first. She knew so few men of any con- 
dition. Mr. Silas Peckham: he was her employer, and she 
ought to think of him as well as she could; but every time 
she thought of him it was with a shiver of disgust. Mr. 
Bernard Langdon : a noble young man, a true friend, like a 
brother to her, — God bless him, and send him some young 
Peart as fresh as his own! But this gentleman produced a 
new impression upon her, quite different from any to which 
she was accustomed. His rich, low tones had the strangest 
significance to her ; she felt sure he must have lived through 
long experiences, sorrowful like her own. Elsie’s father! 
She looked into his dark eyes, as she listened to him, to see 
if they had any glimmer of that peculiar light, diamond- 
bright, but cold and still, which she knew so well in Elsie’s. 
Anything but that ! Never was there more tenderness, it 
seemed to her, than in the whole look and expression of 
Elsie’s father. She must have been a great trial to him ; yet 
Pis face was that of one who had been saddened, not soured, 
by his discipline. Knowing what Elsie must be to him, how 
hard she must make any parent’s life, Helen could not but be 
struck with the interest Mr. Dudley Venner showed in her 
as his daughter’s instructress. He was too kind to her; 
again and again she meekly turned from him, so as to leave 
Pirn free to talk to the showy lady at his other side, who was 
looking all the while 

“like the night 

Of cloudless realms and starry skies,” 

but still Mr. Dudley Venner, after a few courteous words, 
came back to the blue eyes and brown hair; still he kept 
Pis look fixed upon her, and his tones grew sweeter and lower 
as he became more interested in talk, until this poor, dear 
Helen, what with surprise, and the bashfulness natural to 
one who had seen little of the gay world, and the stirring of 


228 


ELSIE VENNER. 


deep, confused sympathies with this suffering father, whose 1 
heart seemed so full of kindness, felt her cheeks glowing with 
unwonted flame, and betrayed the pleasing trouble of her' 
situation by looking so sweetly as to arrest Mr. Bernard’s 
eye for a moment, when he looked away from the young: 
beauty sitting next to him. 

Elsie meantime had been silent, with that singular, stilly 
watchful look which those who knew her well had learned to 
fear. Her head just a little inclined on one side, perfectly 
motionless for whole minutes, her eyes seeming to grow small 
and bright, as always when she was under her evil influence, 
she was looking obliquely at the young girl on the other side 
of her cousin Dick and next to Bernard Langdon. As for 
Dick himself, she seemed to be paying very little attention 
to him. Sometimes her eyes would wander off to Mr. Ber- 
nard, and their expression, as old Dr. Kittredge, who watched 
her for a while pretty keenly, noticed, would change per- 
ceptibly. One would have said that she looked with a kind 
of dull hatred at the girl, but with a half-relenting reproach- 
ful anger at Mr. Bernard. 

Miss Letty Forrester, at whom Elsie had been looking- 
from time to time in this fixed way, was conscious mean- 
while of some unusual influence. First it was a feeling of 
constraint, — then, as it were, a diminished power over the 
muscles, as if an invisible elastic cobweb were spinning 
around her, — then a tendency to turn away from Mr. Ber- 
nard, who was making himself very agreeable, and look 
straight into those eyes which would not leave her, and which 
seemed to be drawing her towards them, while at the same 
time they chilled the blood in all her veins. 

Mr. Bernard saw this influence coming over her. All at 
onec he noticed that she sighed, and that some little points 
of moisture began to glisten on her forehead. But she did 
not grow pale perceptibly ; she had no involuntary or hysteric 
movements; she still listened to him and smiled naturally 
enough. Perhaps she was only nervous at being stared at. 
At any rate, she was coming under some unpleasant influ- 
ence or other, and Mr. Bernard had seen enough of the 
strange impression Elsie sometimes produced to wish this- 
young girl to be relieved from it, whatever it was. He 
turned toward Elsie and looked at her in such a way as to 
draw her eyes upon him. Then he looked, steadily and 


THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY. 229 


'calmly into them. It was a great effort, for some perfectly 
inexplicable reason. At one instant he thought he could not 
sit where he was; he must go and speak to Elsie. Then he 
wanted to take his eyes away from hers; there was some- 
thing intolerable in the light that came from them. But he 
was determined to look her down, and he believed he could 
do it, for he had seen her countenance change more than 
once when he had caught her gaze steadily fixed on him. All 
this time took not minutes, but seconds. Presently she 
changed color slightly, — 'lifted her head, which was inclined 
a little to one side, — shut and opened her eyes two or three 
times, as if they had been pained or wearied, — and turned 
away baffled, and shamed, as it would seem, and shorn for 
the time of her singular and formidable or at least evil- 
natured power of swaying the impulses of those around her. 

It takes too long to describe these scenes where a good 
deal of life is concentrated into a few silent seconds. Mr. 
Richard Venner had sat quietly through it all, although this 
short pantomime had taken place literally before his face. 
He saw w T hat was going on well enough, and understood it 
all perfectly well. Of course the schoolmaster had been 
trying to make Elsie jealous, and had succeeded. The little 
schoolgirl was a decoy-duck, — that was all. Estates like the 
Dudley property were not to be. had every day, and no doubt 
the Yankee usher was willing to take some pains to make 
sure of Elsie. Doesn’t Elsie look savage? Dick involun- 
tarily moved his chair a little away from her, and thought 
he felt a pricking in the small white scars on his wrist. A 
dare-devil fellow, but somehow or other this girl had taken 
strange hold of his imagination, and he often swore to him- 
self, that, when he married her, he would carry a loaded 
revolver with him to his bridal chamber. 

Mrs. Blanche Creamer raged inwardly at first to find her- 
self between the two old gentlemen of the party. It very 
soon gave her great comfort, however, to see that Manila 
Rowens had just missed it in her calculations, and she 
chuckled immensely to find Dudley Venner devoting himself 
chiefly to Helen Darley. If the Rowens woman should hook 
Dudley, she felt as if she should gnaw all her nails off for 
spite. To think of seeing her barouching about Rockland be- 
hind a pair of long-tailed bays and a coachman with a band 
on his hat, while she, Blanche Creamer, was driving herself 


230 


ELSIE VENNER. 


about in a one-horse “ carriage ” ! Recovering her spirits by 
degrees, she began playing her surfaces off at the two old 
Doctors, just by way of practice. First she heaved up a 
glaring white shoulder, the right one, so that the Reverend 
Doctor should be stunned by it, if such a thing might be. 
The Reverend Doctor was human, as the Apostle was not 
ashamed to confess himself. Half -devoutly and half -mis- 
chievously he repeated inwardly, “Resist the Devil and he 
will flee from you.” As the Reverend Doctor did not show 
any lively susceptibility, she though she would try the left 
shoulder on old Doctor Kittredge. That worthy and experi- 
enced student of science was not at all displeased with the 
maneuver, and lifted his head so as to command the ex- 
hibition through his glasses. “ Blanche is good for half a 
dozen years or so, if she is careful,” the Doctor said to him- 
self, “ and then she must take to her prayer book.” After 
this spasmodic failure of Mrs. Blanche Creamer’s to stir up 
the old Doctors, she returned again to the pleasing task of 
watching the Widow in her evident discomfiture. But dark 
as the Widow looked in her half-concealed pet, she was but 
as a pale shadow, compared to Elsie in her silent concentra- 
tion of shame and anger. 

“Well, there is one good thing,” said Mrs. Blanche Crea- 
mer; “Dick doesn’t get much out of that cousin of his this 
evening ! Doesn’t he look handsome, though ? ” 

So Mrs. Blanche, being now a good deal taken up with 
her observations of those friends of hers and ours, began to 
be rather careless of her two old Doctors, who naturally 
enough fell into conversaton with each other across the white 
surfaces of that lady, — perhaps not very politely, but, under 
the circumstances, almost as a matter of necessity. 

When a minister and a doctor get talking together, they 
always have a great deal to say; and so it happened that the 
company left the table just as the two Doctors were begin- 
ning to get at each other’s ideas about various interesting 
matters. If we follow them into the other parlor, we can* 
perhaps, pick up something of their conversation. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


WHY DOCTORS DIFFER. 

The company rearranged itself with some changes after 
leaving the tea-table. Dudley Venner was very polite to the 
Widow; but that lady having been called off for a few mo- 
ments for some domestic arrangement, he slid back to the 
side of Helen Darley, his daughter’s faithful teacher. Elsie 
had got away by herself, and was taken up in studying the 
stereoscopic Laocoon. Dick, being thus set free, had been 
seized upon by Mrs. Blanche Creamer, who had diffused her- 
self over three-quarters of a sofa, and beckoned him to the 
remaining fourth. Mr. Bernard and Miss Letty were having 
a snug tete-a-tete in the recess of the bay window. The two 
Doctors had taken two arm-chairs and sat squared off against 
each other. Their conversation is perhaps as well worth re- 
porting as that of the rest of the cbmpany, and, as it was 
carried on in a louder tone, was of course more easy to 
gather and put on record. 

It was . a curious sight enough to see those two representa- 
tives of two great professions brought face to face to talk 
over the subjects they had been looking at all their lives from 
such different points of view. Both were old; old enough to 
have been molded by their habits of thought and life; old 
enough to have all their beliefs “fretted in” as vintners say, — 
thoroughly worked up with their characters. Each of them 
looked his calling. The Reverend Doctor had lived a good 
deal among books in his study ; the Doctor, as we will call the 
medical gentleman, had been riding about the country for 
between thirty and forty years. His face looked tough and 
weather-worn; while the Reverend Doctor’s, hearty as it ap- 
peared, was of finer texture. The Doctor’s was the graver of 
the two; there ^as something of grimness about it, — partly 
ewing to the northeasters he had faced for so many years, 
partly to long companionship with that stern personage who 
never deals in sentiment or pleasantry. His speech was apt to 
be brief and peremptory ; it was a way he had got by ordering 


231 


232 


ELSIE TENNER. 


patients; but he could discourse somewhat, on occasion, as 
the reader may find out. The Reverend Doctor had an open, 
smiling expression, a cheery voice, a hearty laugh, and a 
•cordial way with him which some thought too lively for his 
cloth, but which children, who are good judges of such mat- 
ters, delighted in, so that he was the favorite of all the little 
rogues about town. But he had the clerical art of sobering 
down in a moment when asked to say grace while somebody 
was in the middle of some particularly funny story; and 
though his voice was so cheery in common talk, in the pulpit, 
like almost all preachers, he had a wholly different and pecu- 
liar way of speaking, supposed to be more acceptable to the 
Creator than the natural manner. In point of fact, most of 
-our anti-papal and anti-prelatical clergymen do really intone 
their prayers, without suspecting in the least that they have 
fallen into such a Romish practice. 

This is the way the conversation between the Doctor of 
Divinity and the Doctor of Medicine was going on at the 
point where these notes take it up: 

“ * Tibi tres medici, duo athei,’ you know, Doctor. Your pro- 
fession has always had the credit of being lax in doctrine, — 
though pretty stringent in practice, ha! ha!” 

“ Some priest said that,” the Doctor answered dryly. 
“ They always talked Latin when they had a bigger lie than 
•common to get rid of.” 

“ Good ! ” said the Reverend Doctor ; “ I’m afraid they 
would lie a little sometimes. But isn’t there some truth in it. 
Doctor? Don’t you think your profession is apt to see 
Mature’ in the place of the God of Nature, — to lose sight 
of the great First Cause in their daily study of secondary 
causes ? ” 

“ I’ve thought about that,” the Doctor answered, “ and I’ve 
talked about it, and read about it, and I’ve come to the con- 
clusion that nobody believes in God and trusts in God quite 
so much as the doctors; only it isn’t just the sort of Deity 
that some of your profession have wanted them to take up 
with. There was a student of mine wrote a dissertation on 
the Natural Theology of Health and Disease, and took that 
old lying proverb for his motto. He knew a good 
deal more about books than ever I did, and had studied in 
many countries. I’ll tell you what he said about it. He 


WHY DOCTORS DIFFER. 23£ 

said the old Heathen Doctor, Galen, praised God for his, 
handiwork in the human body, just as if he had been a. 
Christian, or the Psalmist himself. He said they had this, 
sentence set up in large letters in the great lecutre-room in 
Paris, where he attended : i I dressed his wound and God' 
healed him.’ That was an old surgeon’s saying. And he' 
gave a long list of doctors, who were not only Christians, but 
famous ones. I grant you, though, ministers and doctors are> 
very apt to see differently in spiritual matters.” 

“That’s it,” said the Reverend Doctor; “you are apt to* 
see 1 Nature ’ where we see God, and appeal to 1 Science ” 3 
where we are contented with Revelation.” 

“We don’t separate God and Nature, perhaps, as you do,”* 
the Doctor answered. “ When we say that God is omnipres- 
ent and omnipotent and omniscient, we are a little more apt 
to mean it than you folks are. We think, when a wound 
heals, that God’s presence and power and knowledge are* 
there, healing it, just as that old surgeon did. We think su 
good many theologians, working among their books, don’t 
see the facts of the world they live in. When we tell ’em of’ 
these facts, they are apt to call us materialists and atheists^ 
and infidels, and all that. We can’t help seeing the facts,, 
and we don’t think it’s wicked to mention ’em.” 

“ Do tell me,” the Reverend Doctor said, “ some of these 
facts we are in the habit of overlooking, and which your pro- 
fession thinks it can see and understand.” 

“ That’s very easy,” the Doctor replied. “ For instance : you 
don’t understand or don’t allow for idiosyncrasies as we learn 
to. We know that food and physic act differently with dif- 
ferent people; but you think the same kind of truth is going 
to suit, or ought to suit, all minds. We don’t fight with a 
patient because he can’t take magnesia or opium; but you 
are all the time quarreling over your beliefs, as if belief did 
not depend very much on race and constitution, to say noth- 
ing of early training.” 

“Do you mean to say that every man is not absolutely 
free to choose his beliefs ? ” 

“ The men you write about in your studies are, but not the 
men we see in the real world. There is some apparently con- 
genital defect in the Indians, for instance, that keeps them 
from choosing civilization and Christianity. So with the- 
Gypsies, very likely. Everybody knows that Catholicism or* 


234 


ELSIE VENNER. 


^Protestantism is a good deal a matter of race. Constitution 
.has more to do with belief than people think for. I went to 
a Universalist church, when I was in the city one day, to 
hear a famous man whom all the world knows, and I never 
.saw such pews-full of broad shoulders and florid faces, and 
.substantial, wholesome-looking persons, male and female, in 
all my life. Why, it was astonishing. Either their creed 
made them healthy, or they chose it because they were 
healthy. Your folks have never got the hang of human 
mature.” 

“ I am afraid this would be considered a degrading and 
dangerous view of human beliefs and responsibility for 
them,” the Reverend Doctor replied. “ Prove to a man that 
his will is governed by something outside of himself, and 
^you have lost all hold on his moral and religious nature. 
There is nothing bad men want to believe so much as that 
they are governed by necessity. Now that which is at once 
degrading and dangerous cannot be true.” 

“No doubt,” the Doctor replied, “ all large views of man- 
kind limit our estimate of the absolute freedom of the will. 
But I don’t think it degrades or endangers us, for this rea- 
son, that, while it makes us charitable to the rest of mankind, 
our own sense of freedom, whatever it is, is never affected by 
argument. Conscience won’t be reasoned with. We feel that 
^we can practically do this or that, and if we choose the wrong, 
we know we are responsible ; but observation teaches us, that 
this or that other race or individual has not the same practical 
freedom of choice. I don’t see how we can avoid this con- 
clusion in the instance of the American Indians. The science 
of Ethnology has upset a good many theoretical notions about 
human nature.” 

“ Science ! ” said the Reverend Doctor, “ science 1 that was 
a word the Apostle Paul did not seem to think much of, if 
~we may judge by the Epistle to Timothy : ‘ Oppositions to 

^science falsely so called.’ I own that I am jealous of that 
word and the pretensions that go with it. Science has seemed 
to me to be very often only the handmaid of skepticism.” 

“Doctor,” the physician said, emphatically, “science is 
knowledge. Nothing that is not known properly belongs to 
^science. Whenever knowledge obliges us to doubt, we are ai- 
rways safe in doubting. Astronomers foretell eclipses, say 
low long comets are to stay with us, point out where a new 


WHY DOCTORS DIFFER. 


233 


planet is to be found. We see they know what they assert,, 
and the poor old Roman Catholic Church has at last to 
knock under. So Geology proves a certain succession of 
events, and the best Christian in the world must make the- 
earth’s history square with it. Besides, I don’t think you. 
remember what great revelations of himself the Creator has- 
made in the minds of the men who have built up science.. 
You seem to me to hold his human masterpieces very cheap.. 
Don’t you think the inspiration of the Almighty gave Newton, 
and Cuvier ‘ understanding ’ ? ” 

The Reverend Doctor was not arguing for victory. In 
fact, what he wanted was to call out the opinions of the old 
physician by a show of opposition, being already predisposed 
to agree with many of them. He was rather trying the com- 
mon arguments, as one tries tricks of fence merely to learn 
the way of parrying. But just here he saw a tempting open- 
ing, and could not resist giving a home-thrust. 

“Yes; but you surely would not consider it inspiration of 
the same kind as that of the writers of the Old Testa- 
ment ? ” 

That cornered the Doctor, and he paused a moment before? 
he replied. Then he raised his head so as to command the- 
Reverend Doctor’s face through his spectacles, and said, — 

“I did not say that. You are clear, I suppose, that the* 
Omniscient spoke through Solomon, but that Shakspere- 
wrote without his help ? ” 

The Reverend Doctor looked very grave. It was a bold,, 
blunt way of putting the question. He turned it aside with 
the remark, that Shakspere seemed to him at times to come- 
as near inspiration as any human being not included among- 
the sacred writers. 

“ Doctor,” the physician began, as from a sudden sugges- 
tion, “ you won’t quarrel with me, if I tell you some of my- 
real thoughts, will you ? ” 

“ Say on, my dear sir, say on,” the minister answered, with 
his most genial smile; “your real thoughts are just what I 
want to get at. A man’s real thoughts are a great rarity. If 
I don’t agree with you, I should like to hear you.” 

The Doctor began ; and, in order to give his thoughts more? 
connectedly, we will omit the conversational breaks, the ques- 
tions and comments of the clergyman, and all accidental in- 
terruptions. 


236 


ELSIE VENNER. 


“ When the old ecclesiastics said that where there were 
three doctors there were two atheists, they lied, of course. 
They called everybody who differed from them atheists, until 
they found out that not believing in God wasn't nearly so 
ugly a crime as not believing in some particular dogma; 
then they called them heretics, until so many good people 
had been burned under that name that it began to smell too 
■strong of roasting flesh — and after that infidels, which prop- 
erly means people without faith, of whom there are not a 
: great many in any place or time. But then, of course, there 
was some reason why doctors shouldn’t think about religion 
^exactly as ministers did, or they never would have made that 
proverb. It is very likely that something of the same kind 
is true now; whether it is so or not, I am going to tell you 
the reason why it should not be strange, if doctors should take 
vather different views from clergymen about some matters of 
belief. I don’t, of course, mean all doctors nor all clergymen. 
Some doctors go as far as any old New England divine, and 
some clergymen agree very well with the doctors that think 
least according to rule. 

“To begin with their ideas of the Creator himself. They 
-always see him trying to help his creatures out of their 
troubles. A man no sooner gets a cut, than the Great Phy- 
sician, whose agency we often call Nature, goes to work, first 
do stop the blood, and then to heal the wound, and then to 
make the scar as small as possible. If a man’s pain exceeds a 
•certain amount, he faints, and so gets relief. If it lasts too 
long, habit comes in to make it tolerable. If it is altogether 
too bad, he dies. That is the best thing to be done under the 
circumstances. So you see, the doctor is constantly in the 
presence of a benevolent agency, working against a settled 
■order of things, of which pain and disease are the accidents, 
so to speak. Well, no doubt they find it harder than clergy- 
men to believe that there can be any world or state from 
which this benevolent agency is wholly excluded. This may 
be very wrong; but it is not unnatural. They can hardly 
•conceive of a permanent state of being in which cuts would 
mever try to heal, nor habit render suffering endurable. This 
is one effect of their training. 

“ Then, again, their attention is very much called to human 
limitations. Ministers work out the machinery of responsi- 
blity in an abstract kind of way; they have a sort of algebra 


WHY DOCTORS DIFFER. 


23 T 


of human nature, in which friction and strength (or weak- 
ness) of material are left out. You see, a doctor is in the* 
way of studying children from the moment of birth upwards. 
For the first year or so he sees that they are just as much, 
pupils of their Maker as the young of any other animals. 
Well, their Maker trains them to pure selfishness. Why? In 
order that they may be sure to take care of themselves. So- 
you see, when a child comes to be, we will say a year and a 
day old, and makes his first choice between right and wrong,, 
he is at a disadvantage, for he has that vis a tergo, as we doc- 
tors call it, that force from behind, of a whole year’s life of : 
selfishness, for which he is no more to blame than a calf is*, 
to blame for having lived in the same way, purely to gratify 
his natural appetites. Then we see that baby grow up to a. 
child, and, if he is fat and stout and red and lively, we expect 
to find him troublesome and noisy, and perhaps sometimes, 
disobedient, more or less ; that is the way each new generation- 
breaks its egg-shell; but if he is very weak and thin, and is 
one of the kind that may be expected to die early, he will 
very likely sit in the house all day and read good books about 
other little sharp-faced children just like himself, who died 
early, having always been perfectly indifferent to all the out- 
door amusements of the wicked little red-cheeked children.. 
Some of the little folks we watch grow up to be young women, , 
and occasionally one of them gets nervous, what we call hys- 
terical, and then the girl will begin to play all sorts of‘ 
pranks, — to lie and cheat, perhaps, in the most unaccountable- 
way, so that she might seem to a minister a good example of' 
total depravity. We don’t see her in that light. We give her- 
iron and valerian, and get her on horseback, if we can, and ! 
so expect to make her will come all right again. By-and-by 
we are called in to see an old baby, threescore years and ten 
or more old. We find this old baby has never got rid of 
that first year’s teaching which led him to fill his stomach 
with all he could pump into it, and his hands with everything- 
he could grab. People call him a miser. We are sorry for- 
him; but we can’t help remembering his first year’s train- 
ing, and the natural effect of money on the great majority of' 
those that have it. So while the ministers say he f shall 
hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven,’ we like to remind’ 
them that ‘with God all things are possible.’ 

“ One more, we see all kinds of monomania and insanity; 


238 


ELSIE VENNER. 


We learn from them to recognize all sorts of queer tendencies 
in minds supposed to be sane, so that we have nothing but 
•compassion for a large class of persons condemned as sin- 
ners by theologians, but considered by us as invalids. We 
have constant reasons for noticing the transmission of quali- 
ties from parents to offspring, and we find it hard to hold a 
child accountable in any moral point of view for inherited 
bad temper or tendency to drunkenness, — as hard as we 
•should to blame him for inheriting gout or asthma. I suppose 
we are more lenient with human nature than theologians gen- 
erally are. We know that the spirits of men, and their views 
of the present and the future, go up and down with the barom- 
eter, and that a permanent depression of one inch in the 
mercurial column would affect the whole theology of Chris- 
tendom. 

“ Ministers talk about the human will as if it stood on a 
high look-out, with plenty of light, and elbow-room reaching 
to the horizon. Doctors are constantly noticing how it is 
tied up and darkened by inferior organization, by disease, and 
all sorts of crowding interferences, until they get to look 
npon Hottentots and Indians — and a good many of their own 
race — as a kind of self-conscious blood-cocks with very lim- 
ited power of self-determination. That’s the tendency, I 
say, of a doctor’s experience. But the people to whom they 
address their statements of the results of their observation 
belong to the thinking class of the highest races, and they 
are conscious of a great deal of liberty of will. So, in the 
face of the fact that civilization, with all it offers, has proved 
a dead failure with the aboriginal races of this country, — 
on the whole, I say, a dead failure, — they talk as if they knew 
from their own will all about that of a Digger Indian! We 
are more apt to go by observation of the facts in the case. 
We are constantly seeing weakness where you see depravity. 
I don’t say we’re right; I only tell what you must often find 
to be the fact, right or wrong, in talking with doctors. You 
see, too, our notions of bodily and moral disease, or sin, are 
apt to go together. We used to be as hard on sickness as you 
-were on sin. We know better now. We don’t look at sick- 
ness as we used to, and try to poison it with everything that 
is offensive, — burnt toads and earth-worms, and viper-broth, 
and worse things than these. We know that disease has 
something back of it which the body isn’t to blame for, at 


WHY DOCTORS DIFFER. 


239 


least in most cases, and which very often it is trying to get 
rid of. J ust so with sin. I will agree to take a hundred new- 
born babes of a certain stock and return seventy-five of them 
in a dozen years true and honest, if not 1 pious ’ children. 
And I will take another hundred of a different stock, and 
put them in the hands of certain Ann-street or Five-Points 
teachers, and seventy-five of them will be thieves and liars 
at the end of the same dozen years. I have heard of an old 
character, Colonel Jaques, I believe it was, a famous cattle- 
breeder, who used to say he could breed to pretty much any 
pattern he wanted to. Well, we doctors see so much of 
families, how the tricks of the blood keep breaking out, just 
as much in character as they do in looks, that we can’t help 
feeling as if a great many people hadn’t a fair chance to be 
what is called ‘ good,’ and that there isn’t a text in the Bible 
better worth keeping always in mind than that one, ‘ Judge 
not, that ye be not judged.’ 

“ As for our getting any quarter at the hands of theolo- 
gians, we don’t expect it, and have no right to. You don’t give 
each other any quarter. I have had two religious books sent me 
by my friends within a week or two. One is Mr. Brownson’s ; 
he is as fair and square as Euclid; a real honest, strong 
thinker, and one that knows what he is talking about, — for 
he has tried all sorts of religions pretty much. He tells us 
that the Roman Catholic Church is the one ‘ through which 
alone we can hope for heaven.’ The other is by a worthy 
Episcopal rector, who appears to write as if he were in ear- 
nest, and he calls the Papacy the 1 Devil’s Masterpiece,’ and 
talks about the ‘ Satanic scheme ’ of that very church, 
* through which alone,’ as Mr. Brownson tells us, 1 we can 
hope for heaven ’ ! What’s the use in our caring about hard 
words after this , — 1 atheists,’ heretics, infidels, and the like ? 
They’re, after all, only the cinders picked up out of those 
heaps of ashes round the stumps of the old stakes where they 
used to burn men, women, and children for not thinking just 
like other folks. They’ll ‘ crock ’ your fingers, but they can’t 
burn us. 

“ Doctors are the best-natured people in the world, except 
when they get fighting with each other. And they have some 
advantages over you. You inherit your notions from a set 
of priests that had no wives and no children, or none to speak 
©f, and so let their humanity die out of them. It didn’t seem. 


240 


ELSIE VENNER. 


much to them to condemn a few thousand millions of people' 
to purgatory or worse for a mistake of judgment. They* 
didn’t know what it was to have a child look up in their" 
faces and say ( F ather ! ’ It will take you a hundred or two 
more years to get decently humanized, after so many cen- 
turies of dehumanizing celibacy. 

“ Besides,, though our libraries are, perhaps, not commonly 
quite so big as yours, God opens one book to physicians that 
a good many of you don’t know much about, — the Book of’ 
Life. That is not none of your dusty folios, with black let- 
ters between pasteboard and leather, but it is printed in 
bright red type, and the binding of it is warm and tender 
to every touch. They reverence that book as one of the- 
Almighty’s infallible revelations. They will insist on read- 
ing you lessons out of it, whether you call them names or* 
not. These will always be lessons of charity. No doubt, 
nothing can be more provoking to listen to. But do beg your 
folks to remember that the Smithfield fires are all out, and 
that the cinders are very dirty and not in the least dangerous. 
They’d a great deal better be civil, and not be throwing old 
proverbs in the doctors’ faces, when they say that the man 
of the old monkish notions is one thing and the man they 
watch from his cradle to his coffin is something very dif- 
ferent.” 

It has cost a good deal of trouble to work the Doctor’s talk 
up into this formal shape. Some of his sentences have been 
rounded off for him, and the whole brought into a more 
rhetorical form than it could have pretended to, if taken as- 
it fell from his lips. But the exact course of his remarks 
has been followed, and, as far as possible, his expressions have' 
been retained. Though given in the form of a discourse, it: 
must be remembered that it was a conversation, much more- 
fragmentary and colloquial 'than it seems as just read. 

The Reverend Doctor was very far from taking offense air 
the old physician’s freedom of speech. He knew him to be 
honest, kind, charitable, self-denying whenever any sorrow 
was to be alleviated, always reverential, with a cheerful trust 
in the great Father of all mankind. To be sure, his senior 
deacon, old Deacon Shearer, — who seemed to have got hisr 
Scripture- teachings out of the “ Vinegar Bible,” (the one- 
.where Vineyard is misprinted Vinegar, which a good manw 


WHY DOCTORS DIFFER. 


241 

people seem to have adopted as the true reading), — -his senior 
^deacon had called Dr. Kittredge an “ infidel.” But the Rev- 
erend Doctor could not help feeling, that, unless the text, 
li By their fruits ye shall know them,” were an interpolation, 
■the Doctor was the better Christian of the two. Whatever 
his senior deacon might think about it, he said to himself that 
he shouldn’t be surprised if he met the Doctor in heaven yet, 
inquiring anxiously after old Deacon Shearer. 

He was on the point of expressing himself very frankly to 
fhe Doctor, with that benevolent smile on his face which 
had sometimes come near giving offense to the readers of the 

Vinegar ” edition, but he saw that the physician’s atten- 
tion had been arrested by Elsie. He looked in the same direc- 
tion himself, and could not help being struck by her attitude 
and expression. There was something singularly graceful in 
the curves of her neck and the rest of her figure, but she was 
;so perfectly still, that it seemed as if she were hardly breath- 
ing. Her eyes were fixed on the young girl with whom Mr. 
Hernard was talking. He had often noticed their brilliancy, 
hut now it seemed to him that they appeared dull, and the 
look of her features was as of some passion which had missed 
its stroke. Mr. Bernard’s companion seemed unconscious 
that she was the object of this attention, and was listening to 
the young master as if he had succeeded in making himself 
•very agreeable. 

Of course Dick Venner had not mistaken the game that 
was going on. The schoolmaster meant to make Elsie jeal- 
ous, — and he had done it. That’s it : get her savage first, and 
then come wheedling round her, — a sure trick, if he isn’t 
headed off somehow. But Dick saw well enough that he had 
better let Elsie alone just now, and thought the best way of 
killing the evening would be to amuse himself in a little 
lively talk with Mrs. Blanche Creamer, and incidentally to 
show Elsie that he could make himself acceptable to other 
women, if not to herself. 

The Doctor presently went up to Elsie, determined to en- 
gage her in conversation and get her out of her thoughts, 
which he saw, by her look, were dangerous. Her father had 
been on the point of leaving Helen Darley to go to her, but 
felt easy enough when he saw the old Doctor at her side, and. 
so went on talking. The Reverend Doctor, being now left 
.alone, engaged the Widow Rowens, who put the best face on. 


242 


ELSIE YENNER. 


her vexation she could, but was devoting herself to all the 
underground deities for having been such a fool as to ask 
that pale-faced thing from the Institute to fill up her party. 

There is no space left to report the rest of the conversation.. 
If there was anything of any significance in it, it will turn 
up by-and-by, no doubt. At ten o’clock the Reverend Doctor 
called Miss Letty, who had no idea it was so late; Mr. Ber- 
nard gave his arm to Helen; Mr. Richard saw to Mrs. 
Blanche Creamer; the Doctor gave Elsie a cautioning look, 
and went off alone, thoughtful; Dudley Venner and his 
daughter got into their carriage and were whirled away. The 
Widow’s gambit was played, and she had not won the game.. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


THE WILD HUNTSMAN. 

The young master had not forgotten the old Doctor’s cau- 
tions. Without attributing any great importance to the 
warning he had given him, Mr. Bernard had so far complied 
with his advice that he was becoming a pretty good shot with 
the pistol. It was an amusement as good as many others to 
practice, and he had taken a fancy to it after the first few 
days. 

The popping of a pistol at odd hours in the back-yard of 
the Institute was a phenomenon more than sufficiently re- 
markable to be talked about in Rockland. The viscous intel- 
ligence of a country village is not easily stirred by the winds 
which ripple the fluent thought of great cities, but it holds 
•every straw and entangles every insect that lights upon it. 
It soon became rumored in the town that the young master 
was a wonderful shot with the pistol. Some said he could hit 
a f’opence-ha’penny at three rod; some that he had shot a 
swallow, flying, with a single ball; some, that he snuffed a 
-candle five times out of six at ten paces, and that he could 
hit any button in a man’s coat he wanted to. In other words, 
as in all such cases, all the common feats were ascribed to 
him, as the current jokes of the day are laid at the door of 
any noted wit, however innocent he may be of them. 

In the natural course of things, Mr. Richard Yenner, who 
had by this time made some acquaintances, as we have seen, 
among that class of the population least likely to allow a live 
cinder of gossip to go out for want of air, had heard inci- 
dentally that the master up there at the Institute was all the 
time practicing with a pistol, that they say he can snuff a 
candle at ten rods (that was Mrs. Blanche Creamer’s ver- 
sion), and that he could hit anybody he wanted to right in 
the eye, as far as he could see the white of it. 

Dick did not like the sound of all this any too well. With- 
out believing more than half of it, there was enough to make 
the Yankee schoolmaster too unsafe to be trifled with. How- 


243 


244 


ELSIE VENDER. 


ever, shooting at a mark was pleasant work enough; he had. 
no particular objection to it himself. .Only he did not care 
so much for those little popgun affairs that a man carries in 
his pocket, and with which you couldn’t shoot a fellow, — a 
robber, say, — without getting the muzzle under his nose. Pis- 
tols for boys; long-range rifles for men. There was such a. 
gun lying in the closet with the fowling pieces. He would 
go out into the fields and see what he could do as a marks- 
man. 

The nature of the mark which Dick choose for experiment- 
ing upon was singular. He had found some panes of glass, 
which had been removed from an old sash, and he placed these; 
successively before his target, arranging them at different 
angles. He found that a bullet would go through the glass- 
without glancing or having its force materially abated. It 
was an interesting fact in physics, and might prove of some 
practical significance hereafter. Nobody knows what may" 
turn up to render these out-of-the-way facts useful. All this- 
was done in a quiet way in one of the bare spots high up the 
side of The Mountain. He was very thoughtful in taking the 
precaution to get so far away; rifle bullets are apt to glance 
and come whizzing about people’s ears, if they are fired igi 
the neighborhood of houses. Dick satisfied himself that he 
could be tolerably sure of hitting a pane of glass at a dis- 
tance of thirty rods, more or less, and that, if there happened 
to be anything behind it, the glass would not materially alter 
the force or direction of the bullet. 

About this time it occurred to him also that there was an old 
accomplishment of his which he would be in danger of losing 
for want of practice, if he did not take some opportunity to- 
try his hand and regain its cunning, if it had begun to be 
diminished by disuse. For his first trial he chose an evening- 
when the moon was shining, and after the hour when the 
Rockland people were like to be stirring abroad. He was so 
far established now that he could do much as he pleased with- 
out exciting remark. 

The prairie horse he rode, the mustang of the Pampas,, 
wild as he was, had been trained to take part in at least one 
exercise. This was the accomplishment in which Mr. Richard 
now proposed to try himself. For this purpose he sought the 
implement of which, as it may be remembered, he had once 
made an incidental use, — the lasso, or long strip of hide with* 


THE WILD HUNTSMAN. 


245 

-a slip-noose at the end of it. He had been accustomed to 
playing with such a thong from his boyhood, and had be- 
•come expert in its use in capturing wild cattle in the course 
•of his adventures. Unfortunately, there were no wild bulls 
likely to be met with in the neighborhood, to become the sub- 
jects of his skill. A stray cow in the road, an ox or a horse 
in a pasture, must serve his turn, — dull beasts, but moving 
marks to aim at, at any rate. 

Never, since he had galloped in the chase over the Pam- 
pas, had Dick Venner felt such a sense of life and power as 
when he struck the long spurs into his wild horse’s flanks, 
and dashed along the road with the lasso lying like a coiled 
snake at the saddle-bow. In skillful hands, the silent, blood- 
less noose, flying like an arrow, but not, like that, leaving a 
wound behind it, — sudden as a pistol-shot, but without the 
tell-tale explosion, — is one of the most fearful and mysterious 
weapons that arm the hand of man. The old Romans knew 
how formidable, even in contest with a gladiator equipped 
with sword, helmet, and shield, was the almost naked 
retiarius, with his net in one hand and his three-pronged 
javelin in the other. Once get a net over a man’s head, or a 
cord round his neck, or, what is more frequently done now- 
adays, bonnet him by knocking his hat down over his eyes, 
and he is at the mercy of his opponent. Our soldiers who 
•served against the Mexicans found this out too well. Many 
a poor fellow has been lassoed by the fierce riders from the 
plains, and fallen an easy victim to the captor who had 
snared him in the fatal noose. 

But, imposing as the sight of the wild huntsmen of the 
Pampas might have been, Dick could not help laughing at 
the mock sublimity of his situation, as he tried his first ex- 
periment on an unhappy milky mother who had strayed from 
her herd and was wandering disconsolately along the road, 
laying the dust, as she went, with thready streams from her 
swollen, swinging udders. “ Here goes the Don at the wind- 
mill!” said Dick, and tilted full speed at her, whirling the 
lasso round his head as he rode. The creature swerved to one 
side of the way, as the wild horse and his rider came rushing 
down upon her, and presently turned and ran, as only cows 

and it wouldn’t be safe to say it — can run. Just before 

lie passed, — at twenty or thirty feet from her, — the lasso shot 
from his hand, uncoiling as it flew, and in an instant its 


246 


ELSIE VENNER. 


loop was round her horns. “Well cast!” said Dick, as he 
galloped up to her side and dexterously disengaged the lasso- 
“ Now for a horse on the run! ” 

He had the good luck to find one, presently, grazing in a 
pasture at the road-side. Taking down the rails of the fence 
at one point, he drove the horse into the road and gave chase. 
It was a lively young animal enough, and was easily roused 
to a pretty fast pace. As his gallop grew more and more 
rapid, Dick gave the reins to the mustang, until the two 
horses stretched themselves out in their longest strides. If 
the first feat looked like play, the one he was now to attempt 
had a good deal the appearance of real work. He touched 
the mustang with the spur, and in a few fierce leaps found 
himself nearly abreast of the frightened animal he was chas- 
ing. Once more he whirled the lasso round and round over 
his head, and then shot it forth, as the rattlesnake shoots his 
head from the loops against which it rests. The noose wa& 
round the horse’s neck, and in another instant was tightened 
so as almost to stop his breath. The prairie horse knew the 
trick of the cord, and leaned away from the captive, so as to 
keep the thong tensely stretched between his neck and the 
peak of the saddle to which it was fastened. Struggling was 
of no use with a halter round his windpipe, and he very soon 
began to tremble and stagger, — blind, no doubt, and with a 
roaring in his ears as of a thousand battle-trumpets, — at any 
rate subdued and helpless. That was enough. Dick loosened 
his lasso, wound it up again, laid it like a pet snake in a coil 
at his saddle-bow, turned his horse, and rode slowly along 
towards the mansion-house. 

The place had never looked more stately and beautiful to 
him than as he now saw it in the moonlight. The undula- 
tions of the land, — the grand mountain-screen which sheltered 
the mansion from the northern blasts, rising with all its 
hanging forests and parapets of naked rock high towards the- 
heavens, — the ancient mansion, with its square chimneys, and 
body-guard of old trees, and cincture of low walls with 
marble-pillared gateways, — the fields, with their various cover- 
ings, — the beds of flowers, — the plots of turf, one with a gray 
column in its center bearing a sun-dial on which the rays 
of the moon were idly shining, another with a white stone and 
a narrow ridge of turf, — over all these objects, harmonized 
with all their infinite details into one fair whole by the moon- 


THE WILD HUNTSMAN. 247 

light, the prospective heir, as he deemed himself, looked with 
admiring eyes. 

But while he looked, the thought rose up in his mind like 
waters from a poisoned fountain, that there was a deep plot 
laid to cheat him of the inheritance which by a double claim 
he meant to call his own. Every day this ice-cold beauty, 
this dangerous, handsome cousin of his, went up to that 
place, — that usher’s girl-trap. Every day, — regularly now, — 
it used to be different. Did she go only to get out of his, her 
cousin’s reach? Was she not rather becoming more and more 
involved in the toils of this plotting Yankee? 

If Mr. Bernard had shown himself at that moment a few 
rods in advance, the chances are that in less than one minute 
he would have found himself with a noose round his neck, 
at the heels of a mounted horseman. Providence spared him 
for the present. Mr. Bichard rode his horse quietly round to 
the stable, put him up, and proceeded towards the house. He 
got to his bed without disturbing the family, but could not 
sleep. The idea had fully taken possession of his mind that 
a deep intrigue was going on which would end by bringing 
Elsie and the schoolmaster into relations fatal to all his own 
hopes. With that ingenuity which always accompanies 
jealousy, he tortured every circumstance of the last few 
weeks so as to make it square with this belief. From this 
vein of thought he naturally passed to a consideration of 
every possible method by which the issue he feared might be 
avoided. 

Mr. Bichard talked very plain language with himself in all 
these inward colloquies. Supposing it came to the worst, 
what could be done then? First, an accident might happen 
to the schoolmaster which should put a complete and final 
check upon his projects and contrivances. The particular 
accident which might interrupt his career must, evidently, 
be determined by circumstances; but it must be of a nature 
to explain itself without the necessity of any particular per- 
son’s becoming involved in the matter. It would be un- 
pleasant to go into particulars; but everybody knows well 
enough that men sometimes get in the way of a stray bullet, 
and that young persons occasionally do violence to them- 
selves in various modes, — by fire-arms, suspension, and other 
means, — in consequence of disappointment in love, perhaps, 
oftener than from other motives. There was still another 


248 


ELSIE VEKNER. 


kind of accident which might serve his purpose. If anything 
should happen to Elsie, it would be the most natural thing 
in the 1 world that his uncle should adopt him, his nephew 
and only near relation, as his heir. Unless, indeed. Uncle 
Dudley should take it into his head to marry again. In that 
case, where would he, Dick, be ? This was the most detestable 
complication which he could conceive of. And yet he had 
noticed — he could not help noticing — that his uncle had been 
very attentive to, and, as it seemed, very much pleased with, 
that young woman from the school. What did that mean? 
Was it possible that he was going to take a fancy to her? 

It made him wild to think of all the several contihgencies 
which might defraud him of that good-fortune which seemed 
but just now within his grasp. He glared in the darkness at 
imaginary faces : sometimes at that of the handsome 
treacherous schoolmaster ; sometimes at that of the meek-look- 
ing, but, no doubt, scheming, lady-teacher; sometimes at that 
of the dark girl whom he was ready to make his wife; some- 
times at that of his much respected uncle, who, of course, 
could not be allowed to peril the fortunes of his relatives by 
forming a new connection. It was a frightful perplexity in 
which he found himself, because there was no one single life 
an accident to which would be sufficient to insure the fitting 
and natural course of descent to the great Dudley property. 
If it had been a simple question of helping forward a casualty 
to any one person, there was nothing in Dick’s habits of 
thought and living to make that a serious difficulty. He had 
been so much with lawless people that a life between his 
wish and his object seemed only as an obstacle to be removed, 
provided the object were worth the risk and trouble. But if 
there were two or three lives in the way, manifestly that 
altered the case. 

His Southern blood was getting impatient. There was 
enough of the New-Englander about him to make him cal- 
culate his chances before he struck ; but his plans were liable 
to be defeated at any moment by a passionate impulse such 
as the dark-hued races of Southern Europe and their descend- 
ants are liable to. He lay in his bed, sometimes arranging 
plans to meet the various difficulties already mentioned, 
sometimes getting into a paroxysm of blind rage in the per- 
plexity of considering what object he should select as the 
one most clearly in his way. On the whole, there could be no 


THE WILD HUNTSMAN. 


249 

doubt where the most threatening of all his embarrassments 
lay. It was in the probable growing relation between Elsie 
and the schoolmaster. If it should prove, as it seemed likely, 
that there was springing up a serious attachment tending to a 
union between them, he knew what he should do, if he was not 
quite so sure how he should do it. 

There was one thing at least which might favor his proj- 
ects, and which, at any rate, would serve to amuse him. He 
could, by a little quiet observation, find out what were the 
schoolmaster’s habits of life: whether he had any routine 
which could be calculated upon; and under what circum- 
stances a strictly private interview of a few minutes with 
him might be reckoned on, in case it should be desirable. 
He could also very probably learn some facts about Elsie: 
whether the young man was in the habit of attending her on 
her way home from school; whether she stayed about the 
schoolroom after the other girls had gone ; and any incidental 
matters of interest which might present themselves. 

He was getting more and more restless for want of some 
excitement. A mad gallop, a visit to Mrs. Blanche Creamer, 
who had taken such a fancy to him, or a chat with the Widow 
Bowens, who was very lively in her talk, for all her somber 
colors, and reminded him a good deal of some of his earlier 
friends, the senoritas, — all these were distractions, to be sure, 
but not enough to keep his fiery spirit from fretting itself in 
longings for more dangerous excitements. The thought of 
getting a knowledge of all Mr. Bernard’s ways, so that he 
would be in his power at any moment, was a happy one. 

For some days after this he followed Elsie at a long dis- 
tance behind, to watch her until she got to the schoolhouse. 
One day he saw Mr. Bernard join her: a mere accident, very 
probably, for it was only once this happened. She came on 
her homeward way alone, — quite apart from the groups of 
girls who strolled out of the schoolhouse yard in company. 
Sometimes she was behind them all, — which was suggestive. 
Could she have stayed to meet the schoolmaster ? 

If he could have smuggled himself into the school, he 
would have liked to watch her there, and see if there was not 
some understanding between her and the master which be- 
trayed itself by look or word. But this was beyond the limits 
of his audacity, and he had to content himself with such 
cautious observations as could be made at a distance. With. 


250 


ELSIE VEKNER. 


the aid of a pocket-glass he could make out persons without 
the risk of being observed himself. 

Mr. Silas Peckham’s corps of instructors was not expected 
to be off duty or to stand at ease for any considerable length 
of time. Sometimes Mr. Bernard, who had more freedom 
than the rest, would go out for a ramble in the daytime, but 
more frequently it would be in the evening, after the hour 
of “ retiring,” as bedtime was elegantly termed by the young 
ladies of the Apollinean Institute. He would then not un- 
frequently walk out alone in the common roads, or climb up 
the sides of The Mountain, which seemed to be one of his 
favorite resorts. Here, of course, it was impossible to follow 
him with the eye at a distance. Dick had a hideous, gnaw- 
ing suspicion that somewhere in these deep shades the school- 
master might meet Elsie, whose evening wanderings he knew 
so well. But of this he was not able to assure himself. 
Secrecy was necessary to his present plans, and he could not 
compromise himself by over-eager curiosity. One thing he 
learned with certainty. The master returned, after his walk 
one evening, and entered the building where his room was 
situated. Presently a light betrayed the window of his 
apartment. From a wooded bank, some thirty or forty rods 
from this building, Dick Venner could see the interior of the 
chamber, and watch the master as he sat at his desk, the light 
falling strongly upon his face, intent upon the book or manu- 
script before him. Dick contemplated him very long in this 
attitude. The sense of watching his every motion, himself 
meanwhile utterly unseen, was delicious. How little the 
master was thinking what eyes were on him ! 

Well, — there were two things quite certain. One was, 
that, if he chose, he could meet the schoolmaster alone, either 
in the road or in a more solitary place, if he preferred to 
watch his chance for an evening or two. The other was, that 
he commanded his position, as he sat at his desk in the even- 
ing, in such a way that there would be very little difficulty, — 
so far as that went; of course, however, silence is always 
preferable to noise, and there is a great difference in the 
marks left by different casualties. Very likely nothing would 
come of all this espionage; but, at any rate, the first thing to 
be done with a man you want to have in your power is to learn 
his habits. 

Since the tea-party at the Widow Bowens’s Elsie had been. 


THE WILD HUNTSMAN. 


251 

more fitful and moody than ever. Dick understood all this 
well enough, you know. It was the working of her jealousy 
against that young schoolgirl to whom the master had de- 
voted himself for the sake of piquing the heiress of the Dud- 
ley mansion. Was it possible, in any way, to exasperate her 
irritable nature against him, and in this way to render her 
more accessible to his own advances? It was difficult to in- 
fluence her at all. She endured his company without seeming 
to enjoy it. She watched him with that strange look of hers, 
sometimes as if she were on her guard against him, sometimes 
as if she would like to strike at him as in that fit of childish 
passion. She ordered him about with a haughty indifference 
which reminded him of his own way with the dark-eyed 
women whom he had known so well of old. All this added a 
secret pleasure to the other motives he had for worrying her 
with jealous suspicions. He knew she brooded silently on any 
grief that poisoned her comfort, — that she fed on it, as it 
were, until it ran with every drop of blood in her veins, — and 
that, except in some paroxysm of rage, of which he himself 
was not likely the second time to be the object, or in some 
deadly vengeance wrought secretly, against which he would 
keep a sharp lookout, so far as he was concerned, she had no 
outlet for her dangerous, smoldering passions. 

Beware of the woman who cannot find free utterance for 
all her stormy inner life either in words or song ! So long as a 
woman can talk, there is nothing she cannot bear. If she 
cannot have a companion to listen to her woes, and has no 
musical utterance, vocal or instrumental, — then, if she is of 
the real woman sort, and has a few heartfuls of wild blood in 
her, and you have done her a wrong, — double-bolt the door 
which she may enter on noiseless slipper at midnight, — look 
twice before you taste of any cup whose draught the shadow 
of her hand may have darkened ! 

But let her talk, and, above all, cry, or, if she is one of the 
coarser-grained tribe, give her the run of all the red-hot ex- 
pletives in the language and let her blister her lips with them 
until she is tired ; she will sleep like a lamb after it, and you 
may take a cup of coffee from her without stirring it up to 
look for its sediment. 

So, if she can sing, or play on any musical instrument, all 
her wickedness will run off through her throat or the tips of 


252 • 


ELSIE VENNER. 


her fingers. How many tragedies find their peaceful catas- 
trophe in fierce roulades and strenuous bravuras ! How many 
murders are executed in double-quick time upon the keys 
which stab the air with their dagger-strokes of sound! What 
would our civilization be without the piano ? Are not Erard 
and Broadwood and Chickering the true humanizers of our 
time? Therefore do I love to hear the all-pervading turn 
turn jarring the walls of little parlors in houses with double 
door-plates on their portals, looking out on streets and courts 
which to know is to be unknown, and where to exist is not 
to live, according to any true definition of living. Therefore 
complain I not of modern degeneracy, when, even from the 
open window of the small unlovely farm-house, tenanted by 
the hard-handed man of bovine flavors and the flat-patterned 
woman of broken-down countenance, issue the same familiar 
sounds. For who knows that Almira, but for these keys, 
which throb away her wild impulses in harmless discords, 
would not have been floating, dead, in the brown stream which 
slides through the meadows by her father’s door, — or living, 
with that other current which runs beneath the gas-lights 
over the slimy pavements, choking with wretched weeds that 
were once in spotless flower ? 

Poor Elsie ! She never sang nor played. She never shaped 
her inner life in words: such utterance was as much denied 
to her nature as common articulate speech to the deaf mute. 
Her only language must be in action. Watch her well by 
day and by night, Old Sophy! watch her well! or the long 
line of her honored name may close in shame, and the stately 
mansion of the Dudleys remain a hissing and a reproach till 
its roof is buried in its cellar ! 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


ON HIS TRACKS. 

u Abel ! ” said the old Doctor, one morning, “ after you’ve 
harnessed Caustic, come into the study a few minutes, will 
you ? ” 

Abel nodded. He was a man of few words, and he knew 
that the “will you” did not require an answer, being the 
true New-England way of rounding the corners of an em- 
ployer^ order, — a tribute to the personal independence of an 
American citizen. 

The hired man came into the study in the course of a few 
minutes. His face was perfectly still, and he waited to be 
spoken to ; but the Doctor’s eye detected a certain meaning in 
his expression, which looked as if he had something to com- 
municate. 

“ Well?” said the Doctor. 

“He’s up to mischief o’ some kind, I guess,” said Abel. 
“ I jest happened daown by the mansion-haouse last night, ’n’ 
he come aout o’ the gate on that queer-lookin’ creatur’ o’ his. 
I watched him, ’n’ he rid, very slow, all raoun’ by the Insti- 
toot, ’n’ acted as ef he was spyin’ abaout. He looks to me 
like a man that’s calc’latin’ to do some kind of ill-turn to 
somebody. I shouldn’t like to have him raoun’ me, ’f there 
wa’n’t a pitchfork or an eel-spear or some sech weep’n within 
reach. He may be all right; but I don’t like his looks, ’n’ I 
don’t see what he’s lurkin’ raoun’ the Institoot for, after folks 
is abed.” 

“Have you watched him pretty close for the last few 
days ? ” said the Doctor. 

“ W’ll, yes, — I’ve had my eye on him consid’ble o’ the time. 
I haf to be pooty shy abaout it, or he’ll find aout th’t I’m on 
his tracks. I don’ want him to get a spite ag’inst me, ’f I 
c’n help it ; he looks to me like one o’ them kind that kerries 
what they call slung-shot, ’n’ hits ye on the side o’ th’ head 
with ’em so suddin y’ never know what hurts ye.” 


253 


254 


ELSIE VEKNER. 


“ Why,” said the Doctor, sharply, — “ have you ever seen 
him with any such weapon about him ? ” 

“ W’ll, no, — I caan’t say that I hev,” Abel answered. 
“ On’y he looks kin’ o’ dangerous. Maybe he’s all jest ’z he 
ought to be, — I caan’t say that he a’n’t, — but he’s aout late 
nights, ’n’ lurkin’ raoun’ jest ’z ef he wus spy in’ somebody, 
’n’ somehaow I caan’t help mistrustin’ them Portagee-lookin’ 
fellahs. I caan’t keep the run o’ this chap all the time ; but 
I’ve a notion that old black woman daown ’t the mansion- 
haouse knows ’z much abaout him ’z anybody.” 

The Doctor paused a moment, after hearing this report 
from his private detective, and then got into his chaise, and 
turned Caustic’s head in the direction of the Dudley mansion. 
He had been suspicious of Dick from the first. He did not 
like his mixed blood, nor his looks, nor his ways. He had 
formed a conjecture about his projects early. He had made 
a shrewd guess as to the probable jealousy Dick would feel of 
the schoolmaster, had found out something of his movements, 
and had cautioned Mr. Bernard, — as we have seen. He felt 
an interest in the young man, — a student of his own pro- 
fession, an intelligent and ingenuously unsuspecting young 
fellow, who had been thrown by accident into the companion- 
ship or the neighborhood of two persons, one of whom he 
knew to be dangerous, and the other he believed instinctively 
might be capable of crime. 

The Doctor rode down to the Dudley mansion solely for the 
sake of seeing Old Sophy. He was lucky enough to find her 
alone in her kitchen. He began talking with her as a 
physician ; he wanted to know how her rheumatism had been. 
The shrewd old woman saw through all that with her little 
beady black eyes. It was something quite different he had 
come for, and Old Sophy answered very briefly for her aches 
and ails. 

“ Old folks’ bones a’n’t like young folks’,” she said. “ It’s 
the Lord’s doin’s, ’n’ ’t a’n’t much matter. I sha’n’ be long 
roun’ this kitchen. It’s the young Missis, Doctor, — it’s our 
Elsie, — it’s the baby, as we use’ t’ call her, — don’t you remem- 
ber, Doctor? Seventeen year ago, ’n’ her poor mother cryin’ 
for her, — ‘ Where is she ? where is she ? Let me see her ! ’ — 
’n’ how I run upstairs, — I could run then, — ’n’ got the coral 
necklace ’n’ put it round her little neck, ’n’ then showed her 
to her mother, — ’n’ how her mother looked at her, ’n’ looked. 


ON THE TRACK. 


255 


7 n’ then put out her poor thin fingers V lifted the necklace, — 
V fell right back on her piller, as white as though she was 
laid out to bury ? ” 

The Doctor answered her by silence and a look of grave 
assent. He had never chosen to let Old Sophy dwell upon 
these matters, for obvious reasons. The girl must not grow 
up haunted by perpetual fears and prophecies, if it were 
possible to prevent it. 

“ Well, how has Elsie seemed of late?” he said, after this 
brief pause. 

The old woman shook her head. Then she looked up at 
the Doctor so steadily and searchingly that the diamond eyes 
■of Elsie herself could hardly have pierced more deeply. 

The Doctor raised his head, by his habitual movement, and 
met the old woman’s look with his own calm and scrutinizing 
gaze, sharpened by the glasses through which he now saw 
her. 

Sophy spoke presently in an awed tone, as if telling a 
vision. 

“ We shall be havin’ trouble before long. The’ ’s somethin’ 
■cornin’ from the Lord. I’ve had dreams, Doctor. It’s many 
a year I’ve been a-dreamin’, but now they’re cornin’ over ’n’ 
over the same thing. Three times I’ve dreamed one thing, 
Doctor, — one thing ! ” 

“ And what was that ? ” the Doctor said, with that shade of 
curiosity in his tone which a metaphysician would probably 
say is an index of a certain tendency to belief in the super- 
stition to which the question refers. 

“ I ca’n’ jestly tell y’ what it was, Doctor,” the old woman 
answered, as if bewildered and trying to clear up her recol- 
lections ; “ but it was somethin’ fearful, with a great noise ’n’ 
a great cryin’ o’ people, — like the Las’ Day, Doctor! The 
Lord have mercy on my poor chil’, ’n’ take care of her, if any- 
thing happens ! But I’s feared she’ll never live to see the Las’ 
Day, ’f ’t don’ come pooty quick.” 

Poor Sophy, only the third generation from cannibalism, 
was, not unnaturally, somewhat confused in her theological 
notions. Some of the Second-Advent preachers had been 
about, and circulated their predictions among the kitchen- 
population of Rockland. This was the way in which it 
happened that she mingled her fears in such a strange manner 
with their doctrines. 


256 


ELSIE VENNER. 


The Doctor answered solemnly, that of the day and hour 
we knew not, but it became us to be always ready. — “ Is there 
anything going on in the household different from common ? n 

Old Sophy’s wrinkled face looked as full of life and intel- 
ligence, when she turned it full upon the Doctor, as if she 
had slipped off her infirmities and years like an outer gar- 
ment. All those fine instincts of observation which came 
straight to her from her savage grandfather looked out of 
her little eyes. She had a kind of faith that the Doctor was 
a mighty conqueror, who, if he would, could bewitch any of 
them. She had relieved her feelings by her long talk with 
the minister, but the Doctor was the immediate adviser of the 
family, and had watched them through all their troubles. 
Perhaps he could tell them what to do. She had but one 
real object of affection in the world, — this child that she' had 
tended from infancy to womanhood. Troubles were gather- 
ing thick round her; how soon they would break upon her, 
and blight or destroy her, no one could tell; but there was 
nothing in all the catalogue of terrors which might not come 
upon the household at any moment. Her own wits had 
sharpened themselves in keeping watch by day and night, and 
her face had forgotten its age in the excitement which gave 
life to its features. 

“ Doctor,” Old Sophy said, “ there’s strange things goin’ 
on here by night and by day. I don’ like that man, — that 
Dick, — I never liked him. He giv’ me some o’ these things 
I’ got on; I take ’em ’cos I know it make him mad, if I no 
take ’em; I wear ’em, so that he needn’ feel as if I didn’ like 
him! but. Doctor, I hate him, — jes’ as much as a member o* 
the church has the Lord’s leave to hate anybody.” 

Her eyes sparkled with the old savage light, as if her ill- 
will to Mr. Richard Venner might perhaps go a little farther 
than the Christian limit she had assigned. But remember 
that her grandfather was in the habit of inviting his friends 
to dine with him upon the last enemy he had bagged, and 
that her grandmother’s teeth were filed down to points, so 
that they were as sharp as a shark’s. 

“What is that you have seen about Mr. Richard Venner 
that gives you such a spite against him, Sophy ? ” asked the 
Doctor. 

“What I’ seen ’bout Dick Venner?” she replied, fiercely* 
“ I’ll tell y’ what I’ seen. Dick wan’s to marry our Elsie, — 


ON THE TRACK. 


257 

that’s what he wan’s ; ’n’ he don’ love her, Doctor, — he hates 
her, Doctor, as bad as I hate him! He wan’s to marry our 
Elsie, ’n’ live here in the big house, ’n’ have nothin’ to do but 
jes’ lay still ’n’ watch Massa Yenner ’n’ see how long ’t ’ll 
take him to die, ’n’ ’f he don’ die fas’ ’nuff, help him some 
way t’ die fasser! — Come close up t’ me, Doctor! I wan’ t’ 
tell you somethin’ I tol’ th’ minister t’other day. Th’ min- 
ister, he come down ’n’ prayed ’n’ talked good, — he’s a good 
man, that Doctor Honeywood, ’n’ I tol’ him all ’bout our 
Elsie, — but he didn’ tell nobody what to do to stop all what 
I been dreamin’ about happenin’. Come close up to me, 
Doctor ! ” 

The Doctor drew his chair close up to that of the old 
woman. 

“ Doctor, nobody mus’n never marry our Elsie’s long ’s she 
lives. Nobody mus’n’ never live with Elsie but 01’ Sophy; 
’n’ 01’ Sophy won’t never die ’s long ’s Elsie ’s alive to be took 
care of. But I’s feared, Doctor, I’s greatly feared Elsie wan’ 
to marry somebody. The’ s’ a young gen’l’m’n up at that 
school where she go, — so some of ’em tells me, — ’n’ she loves 
t’ see him ’n’ talk wi’ him, ’n’ she talks about him when she’s 
asleep sometimes. She mus’n’ never marry nobody. Doctor! 
If she do, he die, certain ! ” 

“ If she has a fancy for the young man up at the school 
there,” the Doctor said, “ I shouldn’t think there would be 
much danger from Dick.” 

“ Doctor, nobody know nothin’ ’bout Elsie but 01’ Sophy. 
She no like any other creatur’ th’t 'ever drawed the bref o’ 
life. If she ca’n’ marry one man ’cos she love him, she marry 
another man ’cos she hate him.” 

“ Marry a man because she hates him, Sophy? No woman 
ever did such a thing as that, or ever will do it.” 

“Who tol’ you Elsie was a woman, Doctor?” said Old 
Sophy, with a flash of strange intelligence in her eyes. 

The Doctor’s face showed that he was startled. The old 
woman could not know much about Elsie that he did not 
know; but what strange superstition had got into her head, 
he was puzzled to guess. He had better follow Sophy’s lead 
and find out what she meant. 

“ I should call Elsie a woman, and a very handsome one,” 
he said. “ You don’t mean that she has any mark about her, 
except — you know — under the necklace ? ” 


258 ELSIE VENNER. 

The old woman resented the thought of any deformity' 
about her darling. 

“ I didn’ say she had nothin’ — but jes’ that — you know.. 
My beauty have anything ugly? She’s the beautifullest- 
shaped lady that ever had a shinin’ silk gown drawed over her 
shoulders. On’y she a’n’t like no other woman in none of her 
ways. She don’t cry ’n’ laugh like other women. An’ she- 
ha’n’ got the same kind o’ feelin’s as other women. — Do you 
know that young gen’l’m’n up at the school, Doctor ? ” 

“ Yes, Sophy, I’ve met him sometimes. He’s a very nice 
sort of young man, handsome, too, and I don’t much wonder 
Elsie takes to him. Tell me, Sophy, what do you think 
would happen, if he should chance to fall in love with Elsie* 
and she with him, and he should marry her ? ” 

“ Put your ear close to my lips, Doctor, dear ! ” She whis- 
pered a little to the Doctor, then added aloud, “He die, — 
that’s all.” 

“But surely, Sophy, you a’n’t afraid to have Dick marry 
her, if she would have him for any reason, are you ? He can 
take care of himself, if anybody can.” 

“ Doctor ! ” Sophy answered, “ nobody can take care of 
hisself that live wi’ Elsie! Nobody never in all this worl’ 
mus’ live wi’ Elsie but 01’ Sophy, I tell you. You don’ think 
I care for Dick? What do I care, if Dick Venner die? He 
wan’s to marry our Elsie so ’s to live in the big house ’n’ get 
all the money ’n’ all the silver things ’n’ all the chists full o’ 
linen ’n’ beautiful clothes! That’s what Dick wan’s. An’’ 
he hates Elsie ’cos she don’ like him. But if he marry Elsie* 
she’ll make him die some wrong way or other, ’n’ they’ll take 
her ’n’ hang her, or he’ll get mad with her ’n’ choke her. — 
Oh, I know his chokin’ tricks! — he don’ leave his keys roun’ 
for nothin’ ! ” 

“What’s that you say, Sophy? Tell me what you mean 
by all that.” 

So poor Sophy had to explain certain facts not in all 
respects to her credit. She had taken the opportunity of his 
absence to look about his chamber, and, having found a key 
in one of his drawers, had applied it to a trunk, and, finding- 
that it opened the trunk, had made a kind of inspection for 
contraband articles, and, seeing the end of a leather thong* 
had followed it up until she saw that it finished with a noose,, 
which, from certain appearances, she inferred to have seen 


ON THE TRACK. 


259 


service of at least doubtful nature. An unauthorized search; 
but Old Sophy considered that a game of life and death was 
going on in the household, and that she was bound to look out 
for her darling. 

The Doctor paused a moment to think over this odd piece 
•of information. Without sharing Sophy’s belief as to the 
kind of use this mischievous-looking piece of property had 
been put to, it was certainly very odd that Dick should have 
such a thing at the bottom of his trunk. The Doctor re- 
membered reading or hearing something about the lasso and 
the lariat and the bolas, and had an indistinct idea that they 
had been sometimes used as weapons of warfare or private 
Tevenge; but they were essentially a huntsman’s implements, 
after all, and it was not very strange that this young man 
had brought one of them with him. Not strange, perhaps, 
but worth noting. 

“ Do you really think Dick means mischief to anybody, 
that he has such dangerous-looking things ? ” the Doctor 
said, presently. 

“ I tell you, Doctor. Dick means to have Elsie. If he 
ca’n’ get her, he never let nobody else have her. Oh, Dick’s 
a dark man. Doctor ! I know him ! I ’member him when he 
was little boy, — he always cunnin’. I think he mean mis- 
chief to somebody. He come home late nights, — come in 
softly, — oh, I hear him! I lay awake, ’n’ got sharp ears, — I 
hear the cats walkin’ over the roofs, — ’n’ I hear Dick Yenner, 
when he comes up in his stockin’-feet as still as a cat. I 
think he mean mischief to somebody. I no like his looks 
-these las’ days. — Is that a very pooty gen’l’m’n up at the 
schoolhouse, Doctor ? ” 

“ I told you he was good-looking. What if he is ? ” 

“ I should like to see him, Doctor, — I should like to see the 
pooty gen’l’m’n that my poor Elsie loves. She mus’n never 
marry nobody, — but, oh. Doctor, I should like to see him, ’n’ 
jes’ think a little how it would ha’ been, if the Lord hadn’ 
been so hard on Elsie.” 

She wept and wrung her hands. The kind Doctor was 
touched, and left her a moment to her thoughts. 

“And how does Mr. Dudley Yenner take all this?” he 
said, by way of changing the subject a little. 

“ Oh, Massa Yenner, he good man, but he don’ know 
nothin’ ’bout Elsie, as 01’ Sophy do. I keep close by her; I 


260 


ELSIE VENNER. 


help her when she go to bed, ’n’ set by her sometime when she 
’sleep; I come to her in th’ mornin’ ’n’ help her put on her 
things.” — Then, in a whisper, — “ Doctor, Elsie lets OP Sophy 
take off that necklace for her. What you think she do, ’f 
anybody else tech it ? ” 

“ I don’t know, I’m sure, Sophy, — strike the person, 
perhaps.” 

“ Oh, yes, strike ’em ! but not with her han’s, Doctor ! ” — 
The old woman’s significant pantomime must be guessed at. 

“ But you haven’t told me, Sophy, what Mr. Dudley Venner 
thinks of his nephew, nor whether he has any notion that 
Dick wants to marry Elsie.” 

“I tell you. Massa Venner, he good man, but he no see 
nothin’ ’bout what goes on here in the house. He sort o’ 
broken-hearted, you know, — sort o’ giv’ up, — don’ know what 
to do wi’ Elsie, ’xcep’ say ‘ Yes, yes.’ Dick always look 
smilin’ ’n’ behave well before him. One time I thought 
Massa Venner b’lieve Dick was goin’ to take to Elsie; but 
now he don’ seem to take much notice, — he kin’ o’ stupid-like 
’bout sech things. It’s trouble, Doctor; ’cos Massa Venner 
bright man naterally, — ’n’ he’s got a great heap o’ books. I 
don’ think Massa Venner never been jes’ heself sence Elsie’s 
born. He done all he know how, — but, Doctor, that wa’n’ 
a great deal. You men-folks don’ know nothin’ bout these 
young gals; ’n’ ’f you knowed all the young gals that ever 
lived, y’ wouldn’ know nothin’ ’bout our Elsie.” 

“ No, — but, Sophy, what I want to know is, whether you 
think Mr. Venner has any kind of suspicion about his 
nephew, — whether he has any notion that he’s a dangerous 
sort of fellow, — or whether he feels safe to have him about, 
or has even taken a sort of fancy to him.” 

“ Lor’ bless you, Doctor, Massa Venner no more idee ’f any 
mischief ’bout Dick than he has ’bout you or me. Y’ see, he 
very fond o’ the Cap’n, — that Dick’s father, — ’n’ he live so 
long alone here, ’long wi’ us, that he kin’ o’ like to see mos r 
anybody t’ s’ got any o’ th’ ol’ family-blood in ’em. He 
ha’n’t got no more suspicions ’n a baby, — y’ never see sech a 
man ’n y’r life. I kin’ o’ think he don’ care for nothin’ in 
this world ’xcep’ jes’ t’ do what Elsie wan’s him to. The fus’ 
year after young Madam die he do nothin’ but jes’ set at the 
window ’n’ look out at her grave, ’n’ then come up ’n’ look at 
the baby’s neck ’n’ say, ‘It’s fadin’, Sophy, a’n’t it ? 1 


ON THE TRACK. 


261 


V then go down in the study V walk V walk, V then kneel 
down ’n’ pray. Doctor, there was two places in the old carpet 
that was all threadbare, where his knees had worn ’em. An’ 
sometimes, — you remember ’bout all that, — he’d go off up 
into The Mountain, ’n’ be gone all day, ’n’ kill all the Ugly 
Things he could find up there. — Oh, Doctor, I don’ like to 
think o’ them days! — An’ by-’n’-by he grew kin’ o’ still, ’n’ 
begun to read a little, ’n’ ’t las’ he got’s quiet’s a lamb, ’n’ 
that’s the way he is now. I think he’s got religion, Doctor; 
but he a’n’t so bright about what’s goin’ on, ’n’ I don’t believe 
he never suspec’ nothin’ till somethin’ happens; — for the’ ’s 
somethin’ goin’ to happen, Doctor, if the Las’ Day doesn’ 
come to stop it; ’n’ you mus’ tell us what to do, ’n’ save my 
poor Elsie, my baby that the Lord hasn’ took care of like all 
his other childer.” 

The Doctor assured the old woman that he was thinking 
a great deal about them all, and that there were other eyes on 
Dick besides her own. Let her watch him closely about the 
house, and he would keep a look-out elsewhere. If there was 
anything new, she must let him know at once. Send up one 
of the men-servants, and he would come down at a moment’s 
warning. 

There was really nothing definite against this young man; 
but the Doctor was sure that he was meditating some evil 
design or other. He rode straight up to the Institute. There 
he saw Mr. Bernard, and had a brief conversation with him, 
principally on matters relating to his personal interests. 

That evening, for some unknown reason, Mr. Bernard 
changed the place of his desk and drew down the shades of 
his windows. Late that night Mr. Richard Venner drew the 
charge of a rifle, and put the gun back among the fowling- 
pieces. swearing that a leather halter was worth a dozen of it. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


THE PERILOUS HOUR. 

Up to this time Dick Venner had not decided on the par- 
ticular mode and the precise period of relieving himself 
from the unwarrantable interference which threatened to 
defeat his plans. The luxury of feeling that he had his man 
in his power was its own reward. One who watches in the 
dark, outside, while his enemy, in utter unconsciousness, i& 
illuminating his apartment and himself so that every move- 
ment of his head and every button on his coat can be seen 
and counted, experiences a peculiar kind of pleasure, if he 
holds a loaded rifle in his hand, which he naturally hates to 
bring to its climax by testing his skill as a marksman upon 
the object of his attention. 

Besides, Dick had two sides to his nature, almost as dis- 
tinct as we sometimes observe in those persons who are the 
subjects of the condition known as double consciousness. On 
his Hew England side he was cunning and calculating, al- 
ways cautious, measuring his distance before he risked his- 
stroke, as nicely as if he were throwing his lasso. But he 
was liable to intercurrent fits of jealousy and rage, such as 
the light-hued races are hardly capable of conceiving, — 
blinding paroxysms of passion, which for the time over- 
mastered him, and which, if they found no ready outlet, 
transformed themselves into the more dangerous forces that 
worked through the instrumentality of his cool craftiness. 

He had failed as yet in getting any positive evidence that 
there was any relation between Elsie and the schoolmaster 
other than such as might exist unsuspected and unblamed 
between a teacher and his pupil. A book, or a note, even, did 
not prove the existence of any sentiment. At one time he 
would be devoured by suspicions, at another he would try to 
laugh himself out of them. And in the meanwhile he fol- 
lowed Elsie’s tastes as closely as he could, determined to 
make some impression upon her, — to become a habit, a con- 

262 


THE PERILOUS HOUR. 26 & 

venience, a necessity, — whatever might aid him in the attain- 
ment of the one end which w r as now the aim of his life. 

It was to humor one of her tastes already known to the 
reader, that he said to her one morning, — “ Come, Elsie, take 
your castanets, and let us have a dance.” 

He had struck the right vein in the girl’s fancy, for she 
was in the mood for this exercise, and very willingly led the 
way into one of the more empty apartments. What there 
was in this particular kind of dance which excited her it 
might not be easy to guess ; but those who looked in with the 
old Doctor, on a former occasion, and saw her, will remember 
that she was strangely carried away by it, and became almost 
fearful in the vehemence of her passion. The sound of the 
castanets seemed to make her alive all over. Dick knew well 
enough what the exhibition would be, and was almost afraid 
of her at these moments; for it was like the dancing mania 
of Eastern devotees, more than the ordinary light amuse- 
ment of joyous youth, — a convulsion of the body and mind,, 
rather than a series of voluntary modulated motions. 

Elsie rattled out the triple measure of a saraband. Her 
eyes began to glitter more brilliantly, and her shape to un- 
dulate in freer curves. Presently she noticed that Dick’s 
look was fixed upon her necklace. His face betrayed his 
curiosity; he was intent on solving the question, why she al- 
ways wore something about her neck. The chain of mosaics, 
she had on at that moment displaced itself at every step, and 
he was peering with malignant, searching eagerness to see if 
an unsunned ring of fairer hue than the rest of the surface* 
or any less easily explained peculiarity, were hidden by her 
ornaments. 

She stopped suddenly, caught the chain of mosaics and 
settled it hastily in its place, flung down her castanets, drew 
herself back and stood looking at him, with her head a little 
on one side, and her eyes narrowing in the way he had known 
so long and well. 

“ What is the matter. Cousin Elsie ? What do you stop 
for ? ” he said. 

Elsie did not answer, but kept her eyes on him, full of 
malicious light. The jealousy which lay covered up under 
his surface-thoughts took this opportunity to break out. 

“ You wouldn’t act so, if you were dancing with Mr. Lang- 
don, — would you, Elsie ? ” he asked. 


264 


ELSIE VENNER. 


It was with some effort that he looked steadily at her to see 
the effect of his question. 

Elsie colored, — not much, but still perceptibly. Dick could 
not remember that he had ever seen her show this mark of 
•emotion before, in all his experience of her fitful changes of 
mood. It had a singular depth of significance, therefore, 
for him; he knew how hardly her color came. Blushing 
means nothing, in some persons; in others, it betrays a pro- 
found inward agitation, — a perturbation of the feelings far 
more trying than the passions which with many easily moved 
persons break forth in tears. All who have observed much 
■are aware that some men, who have seen a good deal of life 
in its less chastened aspects and are anything but modest, 
will blush often and easily, while there are delicate and 
sensitive women who can faint, or go into fits, if necessary, 
but are very rarely seen to betray their feelings in their 
cheeks, even when their expression shows that their inmost 
soul is blushing scarlet. 

Presently she answered, abruptly and scornfully, — 

“Mr. Langdon is a gentleman, and would not vex me as 
you do.” 

“ A gentleman ! ” Dick answered, with the most insulting 
accent, — “ a gentleman ! Come, Elsie, you’ve got the Dudley 
blood in your veins, and it doesn’t do for you to call this 
poor, sneaking schoolmaster a gentleman ! ” 

He stopped short. Elsie’s bosom was heaving, the faint 
flush on her cheek was becoming a vivid glow. Whether it 
were shame or wrath, he saw that he had reached some deep- 
lying center of emotion. There was no longer any doubt in 
his mind. With another girl these signs of confusion might 
mean little or nothing ; with her they were decisive and final. 
Elsie Yenner loved Bernard Langdon. 

The sudden conviction, absolute, overwhelming, which 
rushed upon him, had well-nigh led to an explosion of wrath, 
and perhaps some terrible scene which might have fulfilled 
some of old Sophy’s predictions. This, however, would never 
do. Dick’s face whitened with his thoughts, but he kept 
still until he could speak calmly. 

“ I’ve nothing against the young fellow,” he said ; “ only 
I don’t think there’s anything quite good enough to keep the 
company of people that have the Dudley blood in them. You 
*a’n’t as proud as I am. I can’t quite make up my mind to 


THE PERILOUS HOUR. 265 

call a schoolmaster a gentleman, though this one may be well 
enough. I’ve nothing against him, at any rate.” 

Elsie made no answer, but glided out of the room and slid 
away to her own apartment. She bolted the door and drew 
her curtains close. Then she threw herself on the floor, and 
fell into a dull, slow ache of passion, without tears, without 
words, almost without thoughts. So she remained, perhaps,, 
for a half-hour, at the end of which time it seemed that her 
passion had become a sullen purpose. She arose, and, look- 
ing cautiously round, went to the hearth, which was orna- 
mented with curious old Dutch tiles, with pictures of 
Scripture subjects. One of these represented the lifting of 
the brazen serpent. She took a hair-pin from one of her 
braids, and, insinuating its points under the edge of the- 
tile, raised it from its place. A small leaden box lay under 
the tile, which she opened, and, taking from it a little white 
powder, which she folded in a scrap of paper, replaced the 
box and the tile over it. 

Whether Dick had by any means got a knowledge of this 
proceeding, or whether he only suspected some unmention- 
able design on her part, there is no sufficient means of deter- 
mining. At any rate, when they met, an hour or two after 
these occurrences, he could not help noticing how easily she 
seemed to have got over her excitement. She was very pleas- 
ant with him, — too pleasant, Dick thought. It was not 
Elsie’s way to come out of a fit of anger so easily as that. 
She had contrived some way of letting off her spite; that 
was certain. Dick was pretty cunning, as Old Sophy had 
said, and, whether or not he had any means of knowing- 
Elsie’s private intentions, watched her closely, and was on 
his guard against accidents. 

For the first time he took certain precautions with reference 
to his diet, such as were quite alien to his common habits. 
On coming to the dinner-table, that day, he complained of a 
headache, took but little food, and refused the cup of coffee 
which Elsie offered him, saying that it did not agree with 
him when he had these attacks. 

Here was a new complication. Obviously enough, he 
could not live in this way, suspecting everything but plain 
bread and water, and hardly feeling safe in meddling with 
them. Hot only had this school-keeping wretch come be- 
tween him and the scheme by which he was to secure his- 


266 


ELSIE VENNER. 


future fortune, but his image had so infected his cousin’s 
jnind that she was ready to try on him some of those tricks 
which, as he had heard hinted in the village, she had once be- 
fore put in practice upon a person who had become odious 
to her. 

Something must be done, and at once, to meet the double 
necessities of this case. Every day, while the young girl 
was in these relations with the young man, was only making 
matters worse. They could exchange words and looks, they 
could arrange private interviews, they would be stooping 
together over the same book, her hair touching his cheek, 
her breath mingling with his, all the magnetic attractions 
drawing them together with strange, invisible influences. 
As her passion for the schoolmaster increased, her dislike to 
him, her cousin, would grow with it, and all his dangers 
would be multiplied. It was a fearful point he had reached. 
He was tempted at one moment to give up all his plans and 
to disappear suddenly from the place, leaving with the 
schoolmaster, who had come between him and his object, an 
anonymous token of his personal sentiments which would be 
remembered a good while in the history of the town of Rock- 
land. This was but a momentary thought ; the great Dudley 
property could not be given up in that way. 

Something must happen at once to break up all this order 
of things. He could think of but one Providential event 
.adequate to the emergency, — an event forshadowed by vari- 
ous recent circumstances, but hitherto floating in his mind 
only as a possibility. Its occurrence would at once change 
the course of Elsie’s feelings, providing her with something 
to think of besides mischief, and remove the accursed ob- 
stacle which was thwarting all his own projects. Every pos- 
sible motive, then, — his interest, his jealousy, his longing 
for revenge, and now his fears for his own safety, — urged 
him to regard the happening of a certain casualty as a matter 
of simple necessity. This was the self-destruction of Mr. 
Bernard Langdon. 

Such an event, though it might be surprising to many 
people, would not be incredible, nor without many parallel 
cases. He was poor, a miserable fag, under the control of 
that mean wretch up there at the school, who looked as if he 
had sour buttermilk in his veins instead of blood. He was 
in love with a girl above his station, rich, and of old family* 


THE PERILOUS HOUR. 


267 

but strange in all her ways, and it was conceivable that he 
should become suddenly jealous of her. Or she might have 
frightened him with some display of her peculiarities which, 
had filled him with a sudden repugnance in the place of love.. 
Any of these things were credible, and would make a probable 
story enough, — so thought Dick over to himself with the New- 
England half of his mind. 

Unfortunately, men will not always take themselves out of 
the way when, so far as their neighbors are concerned, it 
would be altogether the most appropriate and graceful and 
acceptable service they could render. There was at this par- 
ticular moment no special reason for believing that the 
schoolmaster meditated any violence to his own person. On 
the contrary, there was good evidence that he was taking 
some care of himself. He was looking well and in good 
spirits, and in the habit of amusing himself and exercising,, 
as if to keep up his standard of health, especially of taking 
certain evening-walks, before referred to, at an hour when 
most of the Rockland people had “ retired,” or, in vulgar 
language, “ gone to bed.” 

Dick Yenner settled it, however, in his own mind, that 
Mr. Bernard Langdon must lay violent hands upon himself.. 
He even went so far as to determine the precise hour, and the; 
method in which the “ rash act,” as it would undoubtedly be 
called in the next issue of “ The Rockland Weekly Uni- 
verse,” should be committed. Time, — this evening. Method,. 
— asphyxia, by suspension. It was, unquestionably, taking 
a great liberty with a man to decide that he should become 
felo de se without his own consent. Such, however, was the 
decision of Mr. Richard Venner with regard to Mr. Bernard 
Langdon. 

If everything went right, then, there would be a coroner’s 
inquest to-morrow upon what remained of that gentleman, 
found suspended to the branch of a tree somewhere within a 
mile of the Apollinean Institute. The “ Weekly Universe ” 
would have a startling paragraph announcing a “ SAD 
EVENT ! ! ! ” which had “ thrown the town into an intense- 
state of excitement. Mr. Barnard Langden, a well known 
teacher at the Appolinian Institute, was found, etc., etc.. 
The vital spark was extinct. The motive to the rash act 
can only be conjectured, but it is supposed to be disapointed 
affection. The name of an accomplished young lady of the 


:268 


ELSIE VENNER. 


highest respectability and great beauty is mentioned in con- 
nection with this melancholy occurence.” 

Dick Yenner was at the tea-table that evening, as usual. — 
No, he would take green tea, if she pleased, — the same that 
her father drank. It would suit his headache better. — Noth- 
ing, — he was much obliged to her. He would help himself, 
— which he did in a little different way from common, natur- 
ally enough, on account of his headache. He noticed that 
Elsie seemed a little nervous while she was rinsing some of 
the teacups before their removal. 

“ There is something going on in that witch’s head,” he 
said to himself. “ I know her, — she’d be savage now, if she 
hadn’t got any trick in hand. Let’s see how she looks to- 
morrow ! ” 

Dick announced that he should go to bed early that even- 
ing, on account of this confounded headache which had been 
troubling him so much. In fact, he went up early, and locked 
his door after him with as much noise as he could make. 
He then changed some part of his dress, so that it should be 
dark throughout, slipped off his boots, drew the lasso out 
from the bottom of the contents of his trunk, and, carrying 
that and his boots in his hand, opened his door softly, 
locked it after him, and stole down the back-stairs, 
so as to get out of the house unnoticed. He went 
straight to the stable and saddled the mustang. He took a 
rope from the stable with him, mounted his horse, and set 
forth in the direction of the Institute. 

Mr. Bernard, as we have seen, had not been very pro- 
foundly impressed by the old Doctor’s cautions, — enough, 
however, to follow out some of his hints which were not 
troublesome to attend to. He laughed at the idea of carry- 
ing a loaded pistol about with him; but still it seemed only 
fair, as the old Doctor thought so much of the matter, to 
humor him about it. As for not going about when and 
where he liked, for fear he might have some lurking enemy, 
that was a thing not to be listened to nor thought of. There 
was nothing to be ashamed of or troubled about in any of 
his relations with the schoolgirls. Elsie, no doubt, showed 
a kind of attraction towards him, as did perhaps some 
-others; but he had been perfectly discreet, and no father 
nr brother or lover had any just cause of quarrel with him. 
"To be sure, that dark young man at the Dudley mansion- 


THE PERILOUS HOUR. 


269 1 


house looked as if he were his enemy, when he had met him; 
but certainly there was nothing in their relations to each 
other, or in his own to Elsie, that would be like to stir such 
malice in his mind as would lead him to play any of his 
wild Southern tricks at his, Mr. Bernard’s, expense. Yet 
he had a vague feeling that this young man was dangerous, 
and he had been given to understand that one of the risks 
he ran was from that quarter. 

On this particular evening, he had a strange, unusual 
sense of some impending peril. His recent interview with 
the Doctor, certain remarks which had been dropped in his 
hearing, but above all an unaccountable impression upon 
his spirits, all combined to fill his mind with a foreboding- 
conviction that he was very near some overshadowing danger. 
It was as the chill of the ice-mountain toward which the ship 
is steering under full sail. He felt a strong impulse to see 
Helen Darley and talk with her. She was in the common, 
parlor, and, fortunately, alone. 

“ Helen,” he said, — for they were almost like brother and 
sister now, — “ I have been thinking what you would do, if 
I should have to leave the school at short notice, or be taken 
away suddenly by any accident.” 

“ Do? ” she said, her cheek growing paler than its natural 
delicate hue, — “ why, I do not know how I could possibly 
consent to live here, if you left us. Since you came, my 
life has been almost easy; before, it was getting intolerable. 
You must not talk about going, my dear friend; you have 
spoiled me for my place. Who is there here that I can 
have any true society with, but you? You would not leave 
us for another school, would you ? ” 

“No, no, my dear Helen,” Mr. Bernard said; “if it de- 
pends on myself, I shall stay out my full time, and enjoy 
your company and friendship. But everything is uncertain 
in this world. I have been thinking that I might be wanted 
elsewhere, and called when I did not think of it: — it was a 
fancy, perhaps, — but I can’t keep it out of my mind this 
evening. If any of my fancies should come true, Helen, 
there are two or three messages I want to leave with you. I 
have marked a book or two with a cross in pencil on the fly- 
leaf; — these are for you. There is a littl§ hymn-book I 
should like to have you give to Elsie from me; — it may be 
a kind of comfort to the poor girl.” 


:270 


ELSIE VENNER. 


Helen’s eyes glistened as she interrupted him, — 

“What do y<au mean? You must not talk so, Mr. Lang- 
don. Why, you never looked better in your life. Tell me 
now, you are not in earnest, are you, but only trying a little 
sentiment on me ? ” 

Mr. Bernard smiled, but rather sadly. 

“ About half in earnest,” he said. “ I have had some fan- 
cies in my head, — superstitions, I suppose, — at any rate, 
it does no harm to tell you what I should like to have done, 
if anything should happen, — very likely nothing ever will. 
Send the rest of the books home, if you please, and write 
a letter to my mother. And, Helen, you will find one small 
volume in my desk enveloped and directed, you will see to 
whom ; — give this with your own hands ; it is a keepsake.” 

The tears gathered in her eyes;, she could not speak at 
first. Presently, — 

“ Why, Bernard, my dear friend, my brother, it cannot be 
that you are in danger? Tell me what it is, and, if I can 
share it with you, or counsel you in any way, it will only be 
paying back the great debt I owe you. No, no, — it can’t be 
true, — you are tired and worried, and your spirits have got 
depressed. I know what that is; — I was sure, one winter, 
that I should die before spring ; but I lived to see the dande- 
lions and buttercups go to seed. Come, tell me it was noth- 
ing but your imagination. 

She felt a tear upon her cheek, but would not turn her 
face away from him; it was the tear of a sister. 

“ I am really in earnest, Helen,” he said. “ I don’t know 
“that there is the least reason in the world for these fancies. 
If they all go off and nothing comes of them, you may laugh 
at me, if you like. But if there should be any occasion, re- 
member my requests. You don’t believe in presentiments, do 
;you ? ” 

“ Oh, don’t ask me, I beg you,” Helen answered. “ I have 
had a good many frights for every one real misfortune I 
have suffered. Sometimes I have thought I was warned be- 
forehand of coming trouble, just as many people are of 
changes in the weather, by some unaccountable feeling, — but 
not often, and I don’t like to talk about such things. I 
wouldn’t think about these fancies of yours. I don’t believe 
you have exercised enough; — but don’t you think it’s con- 
finement in the school has made you nervous ? ” 


THE PERILOUS HOUR. 


271 


“ Perhaps it has ; but it happens that I have thought more 
of exercise lately, and have taken regular evening walks, 
besides playing my old gymnastic tricks every day.” 

They talked on many subjects, but through all he said 
Helen perceived a pervading tone of sadness, and an ex- 
pression as of a dreamy foreboding of unknown evil. They 
parted at the usual hour, and went to their several rooms. 
The sadness of Mr. Bernard had sunk into the heart of 
Helen, and she mingled many tears with her prayers that 
evening, earnestly entreating that he might be comforted 
in his days of trial and protected in his hour of danger. 

Mr. Bernard stayed in his room a short time before setting 
out for his evening walk. His eye fell upon the Bible his 
mother had given him when he left home, and he opened it 
in the Hew Testament at a venture. It happened that the 
first words he read were these, — “ Lest, coming suddenly, 
be find you sleeping.” In the state of mind in which he was 
ut the moment, the text startled him. It was like a super- 
natural warning. He was not going to expose himself to 
.any jjarticular danger this evening ; a walk in a quiet village 
was as free from risk as Helen Darley or his own mother 
•could ask; yet he had an unaccountable feeling of appre- 
hension, without any definite object. At this moment he 
remembered the old Doctor’s counsel, which he had some- 
times neglected, and, blushing at the feeling which led him 
to do it, he took the pistol his suspicious old friend had 
forced upon him, which he had put away loaded, and, thrust- 
ing it into his pocket, set out upon his walk. 

The moon was shining at intervals, for the night was par- 
tially clouded. There seemed to be nobody stirring, though 
bis attention was unusually awake, and he could hear the 
whir of the bats overhead, and the pulsating croak of the 
frogs in the distant pools and marshes. Presently he de- 
tected the sound of hoofs at some distance, and, looking 
forward, saw ' a horseman coming in his direction. The 
moon was under a cloud at the moment, and he could only 
observe that the horse and his rider looked like a single dark 
object, and that they were moving along at an easy pace. 
Mr. Bernard was really ashamed of himself, when he found 
bis hand on the butt of his pistol. When the horseman was 
within a hundred and fifty yards of him, the moon shone 
<out suddenly and revealed each of them to the other. The 


ELSIE VENNER. 


272 

rider paused for a moment, as if carefully surveying the* 
pedestrian, then suddenly put his horse to the full gallop, 
and dashed towards him, rising at the same instant in his 
stirrups and swinging something round his head, — what, Mr. 
Bernard could not make out. It was a strange maneuver, — 
so strange and threatening in aspect that the young man 
forgot his nervousness in an instant, cocked his pistol, and 
waited to see what mischief all this meant. He did not 
wait long. As the rider came rushing towards him, he made 
a rapid motion and something leaped five-and-twenty feet 
through the air, in Mr. Bernard’s direction. In an instant 
he felt a ring, as of a rope or thong, settle upon his shoul- 
ders. There was no time to think, — he would be lost in 
another second. He raised his pistol and fired, — not at the 
rider, but at the horse. His aim was true; the mustang 
gave one bound and fell lifeless, shot through the head. The 
lasso was fastened to his saddle, and his last bound threw 
Mr. Bernard violently to the earth, where he lay motionless,, 
as if stunned. 

In the meantime, Dick Venner, who had been dashed down 
with his horse, was trying to extricate himself, — one of his 
legs being held fast under the animal, the long spur on his- 
boot having caught in the saddle-cloth. He found, however, 
that he could do nothing with his right a^m^ his shoulder 
having been in some way injured in his fall. But his South- 
ern blood was up, and, as he saw Mr. Bernard move as if hfr 
were coming to his senses, he struggled violently to free 
himself. 

“ I’ll have the dog, yet,” he said, — “ only let me get at 
him with the knife ! ” 

He had just succeeded in extricating his imprisoned leg, 
and was ready to spring to his feet, when he was caught 
firmly by the throat, and, looking up, saw a clumsy barbed 
weapon, commonly known as a hay-fork, within an inch of 
his breast. 

“ Hold on there ! What ’n thunder Y y’ abaout, y’ darned 
Portagee ? ” said a voice, with a decided nasal tone in it, 
but sharp and resolute. 

Dick looked from the weapon to the person who held it, 
and saw a sturdy, plain man standing over him, with his 
teeth clinched, and his aspect that of one all ready for 
mischief. 


THE PERILOUS HOUR. 


273 


<( Lay still, naow ! ” said Abel Stebbins, the Doctor’s man ; 
<l ’f y’ don’t, I’ll stick ye, ’z sure ’z y’ Y alive ! I been a after 
ye f’r a week, ’n’ I got y’ naow ! I knowecL I’d ketch ye at 
some darned trick or ’nother ’fore I’d done ’ith ye ! ” 

Dick lay perfectly still, feeling that he was crippled and 
helpless, thinking all the time with the Yankee half of his 
mind what to do about it. He saw Mr. Bernard lift his 
head and look around him. He would get his senses again 
in a few minutes, very probably, and then he, Mr. Richard 
V enner would be done for. 

“ Let me up ! let me up ! ” he cried, in a low hurried 
voice, — “ I’ll give you a hundred dollars in gold to let me 
go. The man a’n’t hurt, — don’t you see him stirring ? He’ll 
come to himself in two minutes. Let me up! I’ll give you 
a hundred and fifty dollars in gold, now, here on the spot, — 
and the watch out of my pocket, — take it yourself, with your 
own hands ! ” 

“ I’ll see y’ darned fust ! Ketch me lett’n’ go ! ” was 
Abel’s emphatic answer. “Yeou lay still, ’n’ wait t’ll that 
man comes tew.” 

He kept the hay-fork ready for action at the slightest sign 
of resistance. 

Mr. Bernard, in the meantime, had been getting, first his 
senses, and then some few of his scattered wits, a little to- 
gether. 

“ What is it ? ” — he said. “ Who’s hurt ? What’s hap- 
pened ? ” 

“ Come along here ’z quick ’z y’ ken,” Abel answered, “ ’n’ 
Laalp me fix this fellah. Y’ been hurt, y’rself, ’n’ the’ ’s 
murder come pooty nigh happenin’.” 

Mr. Bernard heard the answer, but presently stared about 
and asked again, “ Who’s hurt ? What’s happened ? ” 

“ Y’ r’ hurt, y’rself, I tell ye,” said Abel ; “ ’n’ the’ ’s been 
a murder, pooty nigh.” 

Mr. Bernard felt something about his neck, and, putting 
his hands up, found the loop of the lasso, which he loosened, 
but did not think to slip over his head, in the confusion of 
his perceptions and thoughts. It was a wonder that it had 
not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as to slacken it. 

By this time he was getting some notion of what he was 
about, and presently began looking round for his pistol, 
which had fallen. He found it lying near him, cocked it 


274 


ELSIE VENNER. 


mechanically, and walked, somewhat unsteadily, towards the' 
two men, who were keeping their position as still as if 
they were performing in a tableau. 

“ Quick, naow ! ” said Abel, who had heard the click of 
cocking the pistol, and saw that he held it in his hand, as. 
he came towards him. “ Gi’ me that pistil, and yeou fetch 
that ’ere rope layin’ there. I’ll have this here fellah fixed 
’n less ’n two minutes.” 

Mr. Bernard did as Abel said, — stupidly and mechanically, 
for he was but half right as yet. Abel pointed the pistol at 
Dick’s head. 

“ Naow hold up y’r hands, yeou fellah,” he said, “ ’n’ keep, 
’em up, while this man puts the rope raound y’r wrists.” 

Dick felt himself helpless, and, rather than have his dis- 
abled arm roughly dealt with, held up his hands. Mr. Ber- 
nard did as Abel said ; he was in a purely passive state, and 
obeyed orders like a child. Abel then secured the rope in 
a most thorough and satisfactory complication of twists and 
knots. 

“Naow get up, will ye?” he said; and the unfortunate 
Dick rose to his feet. 

“ Who’s hurt ? What’s happened ? ” asked poor Mr. Ber- 
nard again, his memory having been completely jarred out 
of him for the time. 

“ Come, look here naow, yeou, don’ stan’ aaskin questions 
over ’n’ over ; — *t beats all ! ha’n’t I tol’ y’ a dozen times ? ” 

As Abel spoke, he turned and looked at Mr. Bernard. 

“ Hullo ! What ’n thunder’s that ’ere raoun’ y’r neck ? 
Ketched ye ’ith a slippernoose, hey? Wal, if that a’n’t the 
craowner! Hoi’ on a minute, Cap’n, ’n’ I’ll show ye what 
that ’ere halter’s good for.” 

Abel slipped the noose over Mr. Bernard’s head, and put 
it round the neck of the miserable Dick Yenner, who made 
no sign of resistance, — whether on account of the pain he 
was in, or from mere helplessness, or because he was waiting 
for some unguarded moment to escape, — since resistance' 
seemed of no use. 

“ I’m go’n’ to kerry y’ home,” said Abel ; “ th’ ol’ Doctor, 
he’s got a gre’t cur’osity t’ see ye. Jes’ step along naow, — 
off that way, will ye? — ’n’ I’ll hoi’ on t’ th’ bridle, f’ f£ar 
y’ sh’d run away.” 

He took hold of the leather thong, but found that it was* 


THE PERILOUS HOUR. 275 

fastened at the other end to the saddle. This was too much 
for Abel. 

“Wal, naow, yeou be a pooty chap to hev raound! A 
fellah’s neck in a slippernoose at one eend of a halter, ’n’ 
a hoss on th’ full spring at t’other eend ! ” 

He looked at him from head to foot as a naturalist in- 
spects a new specimen. His clothes had suffered in his fall, 
■especially on the leg which had been caught under the 
horse. 

“ Hullo ! look o’ there, naow ! What’s that ere stickin’ 
aout o’ y’r boot ? ” 

It was nothing but the handle of an ugly knife which 
Abel instantly relieved him of. 

The party now took up the line of march for old Doctor 
Kittredge’s house, Abel carrying the pistol and knife, and 
Hr. Bernard walking in silence, still half -stunned, holding 
the hay-fork, which Abel had thrust into his hand. It was 
all a dream to him as yet. He remembered the horseman 
riding at him, and his firing the pistol ; but whether he was 
alive, and these walls around him belonged to the village of 
Dockland, or whether he had passed the dark river, and 
was in a suburb of the New Jerusalem, he could not as yet 
have told. 

They were in the street where the Doctor’s house was 
situated. 

“ I guess I’ll fire off one o’ these here berrils,” said Abel. 

He fired. 

Presently there was a noise of opening windows, and the 
nocturnal head-dresses of Dockland flowered out of them 
like so many developments of the Night-blooming Cereus. 
White cotton caps and red bandanna handkerchiefs were 
the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point was 
that the village was waked up. The old Doctor always 
waked easily, from long habit, and was the first among those 
who looked out to see what had happened. 

“ Why, Abel!” he called out, “what have you got there? 
and what’s all this noise about ? ” 

“ We’ve ketched the Portagee ! ” Abel answered, as lacon- 
ically as the hero of Lake Erie in his famous dispatch. “ Go 
in there, you fellah ! ” 

The prisoner was marched into the house, and the Doctor, 
who had bewitched his clothes upon him in a way that would 


276 


ELSIE YENNER. 


have been miraculous in anybody but a physician, was dowrt 
in presentable form as soon as if it had been a child in a 
fit that he was sent for. 

“ Richard Yenner ! ” the Doctor exclaimed. “ What is the 
meaning of all this? Mr. Langdon, has anything happened 
to you ? ” 

Mr. Bernard put his hand to his head. 

“ My mind is confused,” he said. “ I’ve had a fall. — Oh, 
yes! — 'wait a minute and it will all come back to me.” 

“ Sit down, sit down,” the doctor said. “ Abel will tell 
me about it. Slight concussion of the brain. Can’t remem- 
ber very well for an hour or two, — will come right by to- 
morrow.” 

“ Been stunded,” Abel said. “ He can’t tell nothin’.” 

Abel then proceeded to give a Napoleonic bulletin of the 
recent combat of cavalry and infantry and its results, — 
none slain, one captured. 

The Doctor looked at the prisoner through his spectacles. 

“What’s the matter with your shoulder, Yenner?” 

Dick answered sullenly, that he didn’t know, — fell on it. 
when his horse came down. The Doctor examined it as care- 
fully as he could through his clothes. 

“ Out of joint. Untie his hands, Abel.” 

By this time a small alarm had spread among the neigh- 
bors, and there was a circle around Dick, who glared about 
on the assembled honest people like a hawk with a broken 
wing. 

When the Doctor said, “Untie his hands,” the circle 
widened perceptibly. 

“ Isn’t it a leetle rash to give him the use of his hands ?" 
I see there’s females and children standin’ near.” 

This was the remark of our old friend, Deacon Soper, who 
retired from the front row, as he spoke, behind a respectable- 
looking, but somewhat hastily-dressed person of the defense- 
less sex, the female help of a neighboring household, accom- 
panied by a boy, whose unsmoothed shock of hair looked 
like a last-year’s crow’s-nest. 

But Abel untied his hands, in spite of the Deacon’s con- 
siderate remonstrance. 

“ Now,” said the Doctor, “ the first thing is to put the- 
joint back.” 

“ Stop,” said Deacon Soper, — “ stop a minute. Don’t you 


THE PERILOUS HOUR. 277 

Ihink it will be safer — for the women-folks — jest to wait till 
mornin’, afore you put that j’int into the socket ? ” 

Colonel Sprowle, who had been called by a special mes- 
senger, spoke up at this moment. 

u Pet the women-folks and the deacons go home, if they’re 
scared, and put the fellah’s j’int in as quick as you like. I’ll 
resk him, j’int in or out.” 

“ I want one of you to go straight down to Dudley Ven- 
ner’s with a message,” the Doctor said. “ I will have the 
young man’s shoulder in quick enough.” 

“ Don’t send that message ! ” said Dick, in a hoarse voice ; 
— “ do what you like with my arm, but don’t send that 
message ! Let me go, — I can walk, and I’ll be off from this 
place. There’s nobody hurt but myself. Damn the shoul- 
der! — let me go! You shall never hear of me again!” 

Mr. Bernard came forward. 

“ My friends,” he said, “ I am not injured, — seriously at 
least. Nobody need complain against this man, if I don’t. 
The Doctor will treat him like a human being, at any rate; 
and then, if he will go, let him. There are too many wit- 
nesses against him here for him to want to stay.” 

The Doctor, in the meantime, without saying a word to 
all this, had got a towel round the shoulder and chest and 
another round the arm, and had the bone replaced in a very 
few minutes. 

“Abel, put Cassia into the new chaise,” he said, quietly. 
u My friends and neighbors, leave this young man to me.” 

“ Colonel Sprowle, you’re a justice of the peace,” said Dea- 
con Soper, “ and you know what the law says in cases like 
this. I a’n’t so clear that it won’t have to come afore the 
Grand Jury, whether we will or no.” 

“ I guess we’ll set that j’int to-morrow mornin’,” said 
Colonel Sprowle, — which made a laugh at the Deacon’s ex- 
pense, and virtually settled the question. 

“ Now trust this young man in my care,” said the old 
Doctor, “ and go home and finish your naps. I knew him 
when he was a boy and I’ll answer for it, he won’t trouble 
you any more. The Dudley blood makes folks proud, I can 
tell you, whatever else they are.” 

The good people so respected and believed in the Doctor 
that they left the prisoner with him. 

Presently, Cassia, the fast Morgan mare, came up to the 


278 


ELSIE VENNER. 


front-door, with the- wheels of the new, light chaise flashing 
behind her in the moonlight. The Doctor drove Dick forty 
miles at a stretch that night, out of the limits of the 
State. 

“ Do you want money ? ” he said, before he left him. 

Dick told him the secret of his golden belt. 

u Where shall I send your trunk after you from your 
uncle’s ? ” 

Dick gave him a direction to a seaport town to which he- 
himself was going, to take passage for a port in South 
America. 

“ Good-by, Kichard,” said the Doctor. “ Try to learn 
something from to-night’s lesson.” 

The Southern impulses in Dick’s wild blood overcame him, 
and he kissed the old Doctor on both cheeks, crying as only 
the children of the sun can cry, after the first hours in the 
dewy morning of life. So Dick Venner disappears from this 
story. An hour after dawn, Cassia pointed her fine ears 
homeward, and struck into her square honest trot, as if 
she had not been doing anything more than her duty during 
her few hours’ stretch of the last night. 

Abel was not in the habit of questioning the Doctor’s, 
decisions. 

“ It’s all right,” he said to Mr. Bernard. “ The fellah’s 
Squire Vernier’s relation, anyhaow. Don’t you want to wait 
here, jest a little while, till I come back? The’ ’s a con- 
sid’able nice saddle ’n’ bridle on a dead hoss that’s layin’ 1 
daown there in the road ’n’ I guess the’ a’n’t no use in 
lettin’ on ’em spile, — so I’ll jest step aout ’n’ fetch ’em along. 
I kind o’ calc’late ’t won’t pay to take the cretur’s shoes ’n’ 
hide off to-night, — ’n’ the’ won’t be much iron on that hoss’s 
huffs an haour after daylight, I’ll bate ye a quarter.” 

“ I’ll walk along with you,” said Mr. Bernard ; — “ I feel 
as if I could get along well enough now.” 

So they set off together. There was a little crowd round 
the dead mustang already, principally consisting of neigh- 
bors who had adjourned from the Doctor’s house to see the 
scene of the late adventure. In addition to these, however, 
the assembly w T as honored by the presence of Mr. Principal 
Silas Peckham, who had been called from his slumbers by 
a message that Master Langdon was shot through the head 
by a highway-robber, but had learned a true version of the. 


THE PERILOUS HOUR. 279 

story by this time. His voice was at that moment heard 
above the rest, — sharp, but thin, like bad cider-vinegar. 

“ I take charge of that property, I say. Master Langdon’s 
actin’ under my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that’s 
on him. Hiram! jest slip off that saddle and bridle, and 
carry ’em up to the Institoot, and bring down a pair of 
pinchers and a file, — and — stop — fetch a pair of shears, too;, 
there’s hoss-hair enough in that mane and tail to stuff a 
bolster with.” 

“You let that hoss alone!” spoke up Colonel Sprowle.. 
“ When a fellah goes out huntin’ and shoots a squirrel, da 
you think he’s go’n’ to let another fellah pick him up and 
kerry him off? Not if he’s got a double-berril gun, and 
t’other berril ha’n’t been fired off yet! I should like to see 
the mahn that’ll take off that seddle ’n’ bridle, excep’ the 
one th’t hez a fair right to the whole concern ! ” 

Hiram was from one of the lean streaks in New Hamp- 
shire, and, not being overfed in Mr. Silas Peckham’s kitchen,, 
was somewhat wanting in stamina, as well as in stomach, for- 
so doubtful an enterprise as undertaking to carry out his 
employer’s orders in the face of the Colonel’s defiance. 

Just then Mr. Bernard and Abel came up together. 

“ Here they be,” said the Colonel. “ Stan’ beck, gentle- 
men ! ” 

Mr. Bernard, who was pale and still a little confused, but 
gradually becoming more like himself, stood and looked in 
silence for a moment. 

All his thoughts seemed to be clearing themselves in this 
interval. He took in the whole series of incidents: his own 
frightful risk; the strange, instinctive, nay, Providential 
impulse which had led him so suddenly to do the one only 
thing which could possibly have saved him; the sudden ap- 
pearance of the Doctor’s man, but for which he might yet 
have been lost ; and the discomfiture and capture of his dan- 
gerous enemy. 

It was all past now, and a feeling of pity rose in Mr. 
Bernard’s heart. 

“ He loved that horse, no doubt,” he said, — “ and no won- 
der. A beautiful, wild-looking creature! Take off those 
things that are on him, Abel, and have them carried to Mr. 
Dudley Yenner’s. If he does not want them, you may keep 
them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. 


■280 


ELSIE VENKER. 


I hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature 
to mutilate him in any way. After you have taken off the 
saddle and bridle, Abel, bury him just as he is. Under that 
old beech-tree will be a good place. You’ll see to it, — won’t 
you, Abel ? ” 

Abel nodded assent, and Mr. Bernard returned to the 
Institute, threw himself in his clothes on the bed, and slept 
like one who is heavy with wine. 

Following Mr. Bernard’s wishes, Abel at once took off the 
high-peaked saddle and the richly ornamented bridle from 
the mustang. Then, with the aid of two or three others, he 
removed him to the place indicated. Spades and shovels 
were soon procured, and before the moon had set, the wild 
horse of the Pampas was at rest under the turf at the way- 
side, in the far village among the hills of New England. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


THE NEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION. 

Early the next morning Abel Stebbins made his appearance’ 
at Dudley Venner’s, and requested to see the maan o’ the 
haouse abaout somethin o’ consequence. Mr. Venner sent 
word that the messenger should wait below, and presently 
appeared in the study, where Abel was making himself at 
home, as is the wont of the republican citizen, when he hides ; 
the purple of empire beneath the apron of domestic service. 

“Good mornin’, Squire!” said Abel, as Mr. Venner- 
entered. “ My name’s Stebbins, ’n’ I’m stoppin’ f ’r a spell 
’ith ol’ Doctor Kittredge.” 

“Well, Stebbins,” said Mr. Dudley Venner, “have you: 
brought any special message from the Doctor ? ” 

“ Y’ ha’n’t heerd nothin’ abaout it, Squire, d’ ye mean t” 
say?” said Abel, — beginning to suspect that he was the first 
to bring the news of last evening’s events. 

“ About what? ” asked Mr. Venner, with some interest.^ 

“Dew tell, naow! Waal, that beats all! Why that ’ere 
Portagee relation o’ yourn ’z been tryin’ t’ ketch a fellah ’n a 
slippernoose, ’n’ got ketched himself, — that’s all. Y’ ha’n’t 
heerd noth’n’ abaout it ? ” 

“ Sit down,” said Mr. Dudley Venner calmly, “ and tell 
me all you have to say.” 

So Abel sat down and gave him an account of the events 
of the last evening. It was a strange and terrible surprise 
to Dudley Venner to find that his nephew, who had been an 
inmate of his house and the companion of his daughter, was 
to all intents and purposes guilty of the gravest of crimes. 
But the first shock was so sooner over than he began to think 
what effect the news would have on Elsie. He imagined that 
there was a kind of friendly feeling between them, and he 
feared some crisis would be provoked in his daughter’s mental 
condition by the discovery. He would wait, however, until 
she came from her chamber, before disturbing her with the; 
evil tidings. 


2S1 


282 


ELSIE VENNER. 


Abel did not forget his message with reference to the 
^equipments of the dead mustang. 

“ The’ was some things on the hoss. Squire, that the man 
he ketched said he didn’ care no gre’t abaout; but perhaps 
you’d like to have ’em fetched to the mansion-haouse. Ef y’ 
didn’ care abaout ’em, though, I shouldn’ min’ keepin’ on ’em; 
they might come handy sometime or ’nother: they say, holt 
on t’ anything for ten year ’n’ there’ll be some kin’ o’ use for 
’t.” 

“Keep everything,” said Dudley Venner. “I don’t want 
to see anything belonging to that young man.” 

So Abel nodded to Mr. Venner, and left the study to find 
some of the men about the stable to tell and talk over with 
them the events of the last evening. He presently came 
upon Elbridge, chief of the equine department, and driver of 
the family-coach. 

“ Good mornin’, Abe,” said Elbridge. “ What’s fetched y’ 
Jaown here so all-fired airly ? ” 

“You’re a darned pooty lot daown here, you be!” Abel 
answered. “ Better keep your Portagees t’ home nex’ time, 
ketch in’ folks ’ith slipper-nooses raoun’ their necks, ’n’ 
kerryin’ knives ’n their boots! ” 

“What V you jawin’ abaout?” Elbridge said, looking up 
to see if he was in earnest, and what he meant. 

“Jawin’ abaout? You’ll find aout ’z soon ’z y’ go into 
that ’ere stable o’ yourn! Y’ won’t curry that ’ere long- 
tailed black hoss no more; ’n’ y’ won’t set y’r eyes on the 
fellah that rid him, ag’in, in a hurry ! ” 

Elbridge walked straight to the stable, without saying a 
word, found the door unlocked, and went in. 

“ Th’ critter’s gone, sure enough ! ” he said. “ Glad on 
’t! The darndest, kickin’est, bitin’est beast th’t ever I see, 
’r ever wan’ t’ see ag’in! Good reddance! Don’ wan’ no 
snappin’-turkles in my stable! Whar’s the man gone th’t 
brought the critter ? ” 

“ Whar he’s gone ? Guess y’ better go ’n aiisk my ol’ man ; 
he kerried him off laas’ night; ’n’ when he comes back, mebbe 
he’ll tell ye whar he’s gone tew ! ” 

By this time Elbridge had found out that Abel was in 
^earnest, and had something to tell. He looked at the litter 
in the mustang’s stall, then at the crib. 

“ Ha’n’t eat b’t haalf his feed. Ha’n’t been daown on his 


THE NEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION. 283 - 


straw. Must ha’ been took out somewhere abaout ten ’r ’leven 
o’clock. I know that ’ere critter’s ways. The fellah’s had him 
aout nights afore; b’t I never thought nothin’ o’ no mischief-. 
He’s a kin’ o’ haiilf Injin. What is ’t the chap ’s been a-doin’' 
on? Tell ’s all abaout it.” 

Abel sat down on a meal-chest, picked up a straw, and put 
it into his mouth. Elbridge sat down at the other end, pulled 
out his jack-knife, opened the penknife blade, and began stick- 
ing it into the lid of the meal-chest. The Doctor’s man had 
a story to tell, and he meant to get all the enjoyment out of 
it. So he told it with every luxury of circumstance. Mr.. 
Venner’s man heard it all with open mouth. No listener in. 
the gardens of Stamboul could have found more rapture in a. 
tale heard amidst the perfume of roses, and the voices of 
birds and tinkling of fountains than Elbridge in following- 
Abel’s narrative, as they sat there in the aromatic ammoniacal 
atmosphere of the stable, the grinding of the horses’ jaws, 
keeping evenly on through it all, with now and then the in- 
terruption of a stamping hoof, and at intervals a ringing crow^ 
from the barn-yard. 

Elbridge stopped a minute to think, after Abel had fin- 
ished. 

“ Who’s took care o’ them things that was on the hoss ? ” he 
said, gravely. 

“ Waal, Langdon, he seemed to kin’ o’ think I’d ought to 
have ’em, — ’n’ the Squire, he didn’ seem to have no ’bjection; 
’n’ so, — waal, I calc’late I sh’ll jes’ holt on to ’em myself ; they 
a’n’t good f’r much, but they’re cur’ous t’ keep t’ look at.” 

Mr. Venner’s man did not appear much gratified by this 
arrangement, especially as he had a shrewd suspicion that 
some of the ornaments of the bridle were of precious metal, 
having made occasional examinations of them with the edge of 
a file. But he did not see exactly what to do about it, except, 
to get them from Abel in the way of bargain. 

“ Waal, no, — they a’n’t good for much ’xcep’ to look at- 
’F y’ ever rid on that seddle once, ’y wouldn’ try it ag’in, very" 
spry, — not ’f y’ c’d haalp y’saalf. I tried it, — darned ’f I sot 
daown f’r th’ nex’ week, — eat all my victuals stan’in’. I sh’d 
like to hev them things wal enough to heng up ’n the stable;: 
’f y’ want t’ trade some day, fetch ’em along daown.” 

Abel rather expected that Elbridge would have laid claim 
to the saddle and bridle on the strength of some promise or- 


:284 


ELSIE VENDER. 


other presumptive title, and thought himself lucky to get off 
with only offering to think abaout tradin’. 

When Elbridge returned to the house, he found the family 
in a state of great excitement. Mr. Venner had told Old 
Sophy, and she had informed the other servants. Every- 
body knew what had happened, excepting Elsie. Her 
father had charged them all to say nothing about it to her; 
he would tell her, when she came down. 

He heard her step at last, — a light, gliding step, — so light 
that her coming was often unheard, except by those who per- 
ceived the faint rustle that went with it. She was paler than 
•common this morning, as she came into her father’s study. 

After a few words of salutation, he said quietly, — 

“ Elsie, my dear, your cousin Richard has left us.” 

She grew still paler, as she asked, — 

“Is he dead?” 

Dudley Venner started to see the expression with which 
Elsie put this question. 

“ He is living, — but dead to us from this day forward,” 
said her father. 

He proceeded to tell her, in a general way, the story he 
had just hear from Abel. There could be no doubting it; — 
he remembered him as the Doctor’s man; and as Abel had 
seen all with his own eyes, — as Dick’s chamber, when unlocked 
with a spare key, was found empty, and his bed had not been 
slept in, he accepted the whole account as true. 

When he told of Dick’s atttempt on the young school- 
master, (“ You know Mr. Langdon very well, Elsie, — a per- 
fectly inoffensive young man, as I understand,”) Elsie 
turned her face away and slid along by the wall to the win- 
dow which looked out on the little grass-plot with the white 
stone standing in it. Her father could not see her face, but 
he knew by her movements that her dangerous mood was on 
her. When she heard the sequel of the story, the discomfiture 
and capture of Dick, she turned around for an instant with 
a look of contempt and of something like triumph on her 
face. Her father saw that her cousin had become odious to 
her. He knew well by every change of her countenance, by 
her movements, by every varying curve of her graceful figure, 
the transitions from passion to repose, from fierce excitement 
to the dull languor which often succeeded her threatening 
paroxysms. 


THE NEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION. 28 £> 


She remained looking out at the window. A group of white 
fan-tailed pigeons had lighted on the green plot before it and 
clustered about one of their companions who lay on his back, 
fluttering in a strange way, with outspread wings and 
twitching feet. Elsie uttered a faint cry; these were her 
special favorites, and often fed from her hand. She threw 
open the long window, sprang out, caught up the white fan- 
tail, and held it to her bosom. The bird stretched itself out 
and then lay still, with open eyes, lifeless. She looked at him 
a moment, and sliding in through the open window and 
through the study, sought her own apartment, where she 
locked herself in, and began to sob and moan like those that 
weep. But the gracious solace of tears seemed to be denied 
her, and her grief, like her anger, was a dull ache, longing, 
like that, to finish itself with a fierce paroxysm, but wanting: 
its natural outlet. 

This seemingly trifling incident of the death of her favor- 
ite appeared to change all the current of her thought. 
Whether it was the sight of the dying bird, or the thought that 
her own agency might have been concerned in it, or some 
deeper grief, which took this occasion to declare itself, — some 
dark remorse or hopeless longing, — whatever it might be,, 
there was an unwonted tumult in her soul. To whom should 
she go in her vague misery ? Only to Him who knows all His 
creatures’ sorrows, and listens to the faintest human cry. 
She knelt, as she had been taught to kneel from her childhood,, 
and tried to pray, but her thoughts refused to flow in the lan- 
guage of supplication. She could not plead for herself as 
other women plead in their hours of anguish. She rose like 
one who should stoop to drink, and find dust in the place of 
water. Partly from restlessness, partly from an attraction 
she hardly avowed to herself, she followed her usual habit and 
strolled listlessly along to the school. 

Of course everybody in the Institute was full of the terri- 
ble adventure of the preceding evening. Mr. Bernard felt 
poorly enough; but he had made it a point to show himself 
the next morning, as if nothing had happened. Helen Darley 
knew nothing of it all until she had risen, when the gossipy 
matron of the establishment made her acquainted with all its. 
details, embellished with such additional ornamental append- 
ages as it had caught up in transmission from lip to lip. She, 


286 


ELSIE VENNER. 


did not love to betray her sensibilities, but she was pale and 
tremulous, and very nearly tearful when Mr. Bernard entered 
the sitting-room, showing on his features traces of the violent 
shock he had received and the heavy slumber from which he 
had risen with throbbing brows. What the poor girl’s im- 
pulse was, on seeing him, we need not inquire too curiously. 
If he had been her own brother she would have kissed him and 
cried on his neck ; but something held her back. There is no 
galvanism in kiss-your-brother ; it is copper against copper; 
but alien bloods develop strange currents, when they flow close 
to each other, with only the films that cover lip and cheek be- 
tween them. Mr. Bernard, as some of us may remember, vio- 
lated the proprieties and laid himself open to reproach by his 
enterprise with a bouncing village girl, to whose rosy cheek an 
honest smack was not probably an absolute novelty. He made 
it all up by his discretion and good behavior now. He saw 
by Helen’s moist eye and trembling lip that her woman’s 
heart was ofl its guard, and he knew, by the infallible instinct 
of sex, that he should be forgiven, if he thanked her for her 
sisterly sympathies in the most natural way, — expressive, and 
at the same time economical of breath and utterance. He 
would not give a false look to their friendship by any such 
demonstration. Helen was a little older than himself, but the 
aureole of young womanhood had not yet begun to fade from 
around her. She was surrounded by that enchanted atmos- 
phere into which the girl walks with dreamy eyes, and out of 
which the woman passes with a story written on her forehead. 
Some people think very little of these refinements ; they have 
not studied magnetism and the law of the square of the dis- 
tance. 

So Mr. Bernard thanked Helen for her interest without the 
aid of the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet, — the love 
labial, — the limping consonant which it takes two to speak 
plain. Indeed, he scarcely let her say a word, at first ; for he 
saw that it was hard for her to conceal her emotion. No 
wonder; he had come within a hair’s-breadth of losing his life, 
and he had been a very kind friend and a very dear com- 
panion to her. 

There were some curious spiritual experiences connected 
with his last evening’s adventure which were working very 
strongly in his mind. It was borne in upon him very irre- 
sistibly that he had been dead since he had seen Helen, — as 


THE NEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION. 287 


dead as the son of the Widow of Nain before the bier was 
touched, and he sat up and began to speak. There was an in- 
terval between two conscious moments which appeared to 
Aim like a temporary annihilation, and the thoughts it sug- 
gested were worrying him with strange perplexities. 

He remembered seeing the dark figure on horseback rise 
in the saddle and something leap from its hand. He remem- 
bered the thrill he felt as the coil settled on his shoulders, and 
the sudden impulse which led him to fire as he did. With the 
report of the pistol all became blank, until he found himself 
in a strange, bewildered state, groping about for the weapon, 
which he had a vague consciousness of having dropped. But, 
according to Abel’s account, there must have been an interval 
of some minutes between these recollections, and he could 
not help asking, Where was the mind, the soul, the think- 
ing principle, all this time? 

A man is stunned by a blow with a stick on the head. He 
becomes unconscious. Another man gets a harder blow on the 
head from a bigger stick, and it kills him. Hoes he become 
unconscious, too? If so, when does he come to his conscious- 
ness ? The man who has had a slight or moderate blow comes 
do himself when the immediate shock passes, off and the organs 
begin to work again, or when a bit of the skull is pried up, if 
that happens to be broken. Suppose the blow is hard enough 
to spoil the brain and stop the play of the organs, what hap- 
pens then? 

A British captain was struck by a cannon-ball on the 
head, just as he was giving an order, at the Battle of the 
Hile. Fifteen months afterwards he was trephined at Green- 
wich Hospital, having been insensible all that time. Imme- 
diately after the operation, his consciousness returned, and 
he at once began carrying out the order he was giving when 
the shot struck him. Suppose he had never been trephined, 
when would his consciousness have returned? When his 
breath ceased and his heart stopped beating? 

When Mr. Bernard said to Helen, “ I have been dead since 
I saw you,” it startled her not a little ; for his expression was 
that of perfect good faith, and she feared that his mind was 
disordered. When he explained, not as has been done just 
now, at length, but in a hurried, imperfect way, the meaning 
of his strange assertion, and the fearful Sadduceeism which 
it had suggested to his mind, she looked troubled at first, and 


288 


ELSIE VENNER. 


then thoughtful. She did not feel able to answer all the diffi- 
culties he raised, but she met them with that faith which is: 
the strength as well as the weakness of women, — which makes 
them weak in the hands of man, but strong in the presence- 
of the Unseen. 

“ It is a strange experience,” she said ; “ but I once had 
something like it. I fainted, and lost five or ten minutes out 
of my life, as much as if I had been dead. But when I came to 
myself, I was the same person every way, in my recollection 
and character. So I suppose that loss of consciousness is not: 
death. And if T was born out of unconsciousness into infancy 
with many family traits of mind and body, I can believe from 
my own reason, even without help from Revelation, that I 
shall be born again out of the unconsciousness of death with 
my individual traits of mind and body. If death is, as it 
should seem to be, a loss of consciousness, that does not shake 
my faith ; for I have been put into a body once already to fit 
me for living here, and I hope to be in some way fitted after 
this life to enjoy a better one. But it is all trust in God and 
in his Word. These are enough for me; I hope they are- 
for you.” 

Helen was a minister’s daughter, and familiar from her 
childhood with this class of questions, especially with all the 
doubts and perplexities which are sure to assail every thinking 
child bred in any inorganic or not thoroughly vitalized faith,. 
— as is too often the case with the children of professional 
theologians. The kind of discipline they are subjected to is 
like that of the Flat-Head Indian papooses. At five or ten or 
fifteen years old, they put their hands up to their foreheads 
and ask. What are they strapping down my brains in this way 
for? So they tear off the sacred bandages of the great Flat- 
Head tribe, and there follows a mighty rush of blood to the 
long-compressed region. This accounts, in the most lucid 
manner, for those certain freaks with which certain children 
of this class astonish their worthy parents at the period of 
life when they are growing fast, and, the frontal pressure be- 
ginning to be felt as something intolerable, they tear off the 
holy compresses. 

The hour for school came, and they went to the great hall 
for study. It would not have occurred to Mr. Silas Peckham 
to ask his assistant whether he felt well enough to attend to* 
iiis duties; and Mr. Bernard chose to be at his post. A little* 


THE HEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION. 289 

headache and confusion were all that remained of his symp- 
toms. 

Later, in the course of the forenoon, Elsie Venner came in 
and took her place. The girls all stared at her, — naturally 
enough; for it was hardly to have been expected that she 
would show herself, after such an event in the household to 
which she belonged. Her expression was somewhat peculiar, 
and, of course, was attributed to the shock her feelings had 
undergone on hearing of the crime attempted by her cousin 
and daily companion. When she was looking at her book, 
or on any indifferent subject, her countenance betrayed some 
inward disturbance, which knitted her dark brows and seemed 
to throw a deeper shadow over her features. But from time 
to time she would lift her eyes toward Mr. Bernard, and let 
them rest upon him, without a thought, seemingly, that she 
herself was the subject of observation or remark. Then they 
seemed to lose their cold glitter, and soften into a strange, 
•dreamy tenderness. The deep instincts of womanhood were 
striving to grope their way to the surface of her being 
through all the alien influences which overlaid them. She 
could be secret and cunning in working out any of her dan- 
gerous impulses, but she did not know how to mask the 
unwonted feeling which fixed her eyes and her thoughts upon 
the only person who had ever reached the spring of her hidden 
sympathies. 

The girls all looked at Elsie, whenever they could steal a 
glance unperceived, and many of them were struck with this 
singular expression her features wore. They had long whis- 
pered around among each other that she had a liking for the 
master; but there were too many of them of whom something 
like this could be said, to make it very remarkable. Now, 
however, when so many little hearts were fluttering at the 
thought of the peril through which the handsome young mas- 
ter had so recently passed, they were more alive than ever to 
the supposed relation between him and the dark schoolgirl. 
Some had supposed there was a mutual attachment between 
them; there was a story that they were secretly betrothed, in 
accordance with the rumor which had been current in the 
village. At any rate, some conflict was going on in that still, 
remote, clouded soul, and all the girls who looked upon her 
face were impressed and awed as they had never been before 
by the shadows that passed over it. 


290 


ELSIE VENNER. 


One of these girls was more strongly arrested by Elsie’s, 
look than the others. This was a delicate, pallid creature*, 
with a wide forehead, and wide-open pupils, which looked as 
if they could take in all the shapes that flit in what, to com- 
mon eyes, is darkness, — a girl said to be clairvoyant under 
certain influences. In the recess, as it was called, or interval 
of suspended studies in the middle of the forenoon, this girl 
carried her autograph-book, — for she had one of those indis- 
pensable appendages of the boarding-school miss of every de- 
gree, — and asked Elsie to write her name in it. She had an 
irresistible feeling, that, sooner or later, and perhaps very 
soon, there would attach an unusual interest to this auto- 
graph. Elsie took the pen and wrote, in her sharp, Italian- 
hand, 

Elsie Yenner, Infelix. 

It was a remembrance, doubtless, of the forlorn queen of 
the “iEneid”; but its coming to her thought in this wajr 
confirmed the sensitive schoolgirl in her fears for Elsie, and 
she let fall a tear upon the page before she closed it. 

Of course, the keen and practiced observation of Helen. 
Darley could not fail to notice the change of Elsie’s manner 
and expression. She had long seen that she was attracted to 
the young master, and had thought, as the old Doctor did,, 
that any impression which acted upon her affections might 
be the means of awakening a new life in her singularly iso- 
lated nature. However, the concentration of the poor girl’s* 
thoughts upon the one subject which had had power to reach 
her deeper sensibilities was so painfully revealed in her fea- 
tures, that Helen began to fear once more, lest Mr. Bernard,, 
in escaping the treacherous violence of an assassin, had been 
left to the equally dangerous consequences of a violent, en- 
grossing passion in the breast of q young creature whose love 
it would be ruin to admit and might be deadly to reject. She 
knew her own heart too well to fear that any jealousy might 
mingle with her new apprehensions. It was understood be- 
tween Bernard and Helen that they were too good friends to 
tamper with the silences and edging proximities of love-mak- 
ing. She knew, too, the simply human, not masculine, in- 
terest which Mr. Bernard took in Elsie; he had been frank, 
with Helen, and more than satisfied her that with all the? 


THE NEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION. 291 


pity and sympathy which overflowed in his soul, when he 
thought of the stricken girl, there mingled not one drop of 
.such love as a youth may feel for a maiden. 

It may help the reader to gain some understanding of the 
anomalous nature of Elsie Venner, if we look with Helen into 
Mr. Bernard’s opinions and feelings with reference to her, as 
they had shaped themselves in his consciousness at the period 
of which we are speaking. 

At first he had been impressed by her wild beauty, and the 
■contrast of all her looks and ways with those of the girls 
-around her. Presently a sense of some ill-defined personal 
element, which half attracted and half repelled those who 
looked upon her, and especially those upon whom she looked, 
Eegan to make itself obvious to him, as soon as he found that 
it was painfully sensible to his more susceptible companion, 
the lady-teacher. It was not merely in the cold light of her 
diamond eyes, but in all her movements, in her graceful pos- 
tures as she sat, in her costume, and, he sometimes thought, 
-even in her speech, that this obscure and exceptional char- 
acter betrayed itself. When Helen said, that, if they were 
living in times when human beings were subject to posses- 
sion, she should have thought there was something not human 
about Elsie, it struck an unsuspected vein of thought in his 
own mind, which he hated to put in words, but which was 
continually trying to articulate itself among the dumb 
thoughts which lie under the perpetual stream of mental 
whispers. 

Mr. Bernard’s professional training had made him slow 
to accept marvelous stories and many forms of superstition. 
Yet, as a man of science, he well knew that just on the verge 
of the demonstrable facts of physics and physiology there is 
a nebulous border-land which what is called ci common 
.sense ” perhaps does wisely not to enter, but which uncommon 
: sense, or the fine apprehension of privileged intelligences, 
may cautiously explore, and in so doing find itself behind the 
.scenes which make up for the gazing world the show which 
is called Nature. 

It was with something of this finer perception, perhaps 
with some degree of imaginative exaltation, that he set him- 
self to solving the problem of Elsie’s influence to attract and 
.repel those around her. His letter, already submitted to the 
reader, hints in what direction his thoughts were disposed to 


292 


ELSIE YENNER. 


turn. Here was a magnificent organization, superb in vig- 
orous womanhood, with a beauty such as never comes but: 
after generations of culture ; yet through all this rich nature, 
there was some alien current of influence, sinuous and dark, 
as when a clouded streak seams the white marble of a perfect 
statue. 

It would be needless to repeat the particular suggestions, 
which had come into his mind, as they must probably have 
come into that of the reader who has noted the singularities 
of Elsie’s tastes and personal traits. The images which cer- 
tain poets had dreamed of seemed to have become a reality be- 
fore his own eyes. Then came that unexplained adventure 
of The Mountain, — almost like a dream in recollection, yet 
assuredly real in some of its main incidents, — with all that 
it revealed or hinted. The girl did not fear to visit the 
dreaded region, where danger lurked in every nook and be- 
neath every tuft of leaves. Did the tenants of the fatal ledge 
recognize some mysterious affinity which made them tributary 
to the cold glitter of her diamond eyes? Was she from her 
birth one of those frightful children, such as he had read 
about, and the Professor had told him of, who form unnatural 
friendships with cold, writhing ophidians? There was no^ 
need of so unwelcome a thought as this; she had drawn him 
away from the dark opening in the rock at the moment when 
he seemed to be threatened by one of its malignant deni- 
zens; that was all he could be sure of; the counter-fascina- 
tion might have been a dream, a fancy, a coincidence. All 
wonderful things soon grow doubtful in our own minds, as 
do even common events, if great interest prove suddenly to 
attach to their truth or falsehood. 

1, who am telling of these occurrences, saw a friend 

in a great city, on the morning of a most memorable disaster, 
hours after the time when the train which carried its victims, 
to their doom had left. I talked with him, and was for some 
minutes, at least, in his company. When I reached home I 
found that the story had gone before that he was* among' 
the lost, and I alone could contradict it to his weeping friends 
and relatives. I did contradict it; but alas! I began soon 
to doubt myself, penetrated by the contagion of their solici- 
tude; my recollection began to question itself; the order of 
events became dislocated; and when I heard that he had 
reached home in safety, the relief was almost as great to me- 


THE NEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION. 293 


as to those who expected to see their own brother’s face no 
more. 

Mr. Bernard was disposed, then, not to accept the thought 
of any odious personal relationship of the kind which had 
suggested itself to him when he wrote the letter referred to. 
That the girl had something of the feral nature, her wild, 
lawless rambles in forbidden and blasted regions of The 
Mountain at all hours, her familiarity with the lonely haunts 
where any other human foot was so rarely seen, proved clearly 
enough. But the more he thought of all her strange instincts 
and modes of being, the more he became convinced that what- 
ever alien impulse swayed her will and modulated or diverted 
nr displaced her affections came from some impression that 
reached far back into the past, before the days when the 
faithful Old Sophy had rocked her in the cradle. He believed 
that she had brought her ruling tendency, whatever it was, 
into the world with her. 

When the school was over, and the girls had all gone, Helen 
lingered in the schoolroom to speak with Mr. Bernard. 

“ Did you remark Elsie’s ways this forenoon? ” she said. 

“No, not particularly; I have not noticed anything as 
sharply as I commonly do; my head has been a little queer, 
and I have been thinking over what we were talking about, 
and how near I came to solving the great problem which every 
day makes clear to such multitudes of people. What about 
Elsie?” 

“ Bernard, her liking for you is growing into a passion. I 
have studied girls for a long while, and I know the difference 
between their passing fancies and their real emotions. I 
fold you, you remember, that Bosa would have to leave us; 
we barely missed a scene, I think, if not a whole tragedy, by 
her going at the right moment. But Elsie is infinitely more 
dangerous to herself and others. Women’s love is fierce 
^enough, if it once gets the mastery of them, always; but this 
poor girl does not know what to do with a passion.” 

Mr. Bernard had never told Helen the story of the flower 
in his Virgil, or that other adventure which he would have 
felt awkwardly to refer to; but it had been perfectly under- 
stood between them that Elsie showed in her own singular 
way a well-marked partiality for the young master. 

“Why don’t they take her away from the school, if she is 
in such a strange, excitable state?” said Mr. Bernard. 


294 


ELSIE VEKNER. 


“ I believe they are afraid of her,” Helen answered. “ It 
is just one of those cases that are ten thousand times worse 
than insanity. I don’t think, from what I hear, that her 
father has ever given up hoping that she will outgrow her 
peculiarities. Oh, these peculiar children, for whom parents 
go on hoping every morning and despairing every night ! If I 
could tell you half that mothers have told me, you would feel 
that the worst of all diseases of the moral sense and the will 
are those which all the Bedlams turn away from their doors 
as not being cases of insanity ! ” 

“Do you think her father has treated her judiciously?” 
said Mr. Bernard. 

“ I think,” said Helen, with a little hesitation, which Mr. 
Bernard did not happen to notice, — “ I think he has been 
very kind and indulgent, and I do not know that he could, 
have treated her otherwise with a better chance of success.” 

“ He must, of course, be fond of her,” Mr. Bernard said 
“ there is nothing else in the world for him to love.” 

Helen dropped a book she held in her hand, and, stooping to* 
pick it up, the blood rushed into her cheeks. 

“It is getting late,” she said; “you must not stay any 
longer in this close schoolroom. Pray, go and get a little; 
fresh air before dinner-time.” 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


A SOUL IN DISTRESS. 

The events told in the last two chapters had taken place 
toward the close of the week. On Saturday evening the 
Reverend Chauncy Fairweather received a note which was 
left at his door by an unknown person who departed without 
saying a word. Its words were these : — 

“ One who is in distress of mind requests the prayers of 
this congregation that God would be pleased to look in mercy 
upon the soul that he has afflicted.” 

There was nothing to show from whom the note came, or 
the sex or age or special source of spiritual discomfort or 
anxiety of the writer. The handwriting was delicate and 
might well be a woman’s. The clergyman was not aware of 
any particular affliction among his parishioners which was 
likely to be made the subject of a request of this kind.. 
Surely neither of the Venners would advertise the attempted 
crime of their relative in this way. But who else was there ?* 
The more he thought about it, the more it puzzled him; and 
as he did not like to pray in the dark, without knowing for 
whom he was praying, he could think of nothing better than 
to step into old Doctor Kittredge’s and see what he had to 
say about it. 

The old Doctor was sitting alone in his study when the- 
Reverend Hr. Fairweather was ushered in. He received his 
visitor very pleasantly, expecting, as a matter of course, 
that he would begin with some new grievance, dyspeptic, 
neuralgic, bronchitic, or other. The minister, however, be- 
gan with questioning the old Doctor about the sequel of the 
other night’s adventure; for he was already getting a little 
Jesuitical, and kept back the object of his visit until it 
should come up as if accidentally in the course of conver- 
sation. 

“ It was a pretty bold thing to go off alone with that rep- 
robate, as you did,” said the minister. 

“ I don’t know what there was bold about it,” the Doctor. 


295 


:296 


ELSIE VENNER. 


answered. “All he wanted was to get away. He was not 
quite a reprobate, you see; he didn’t like the thought of 
disgracing his family or facing his uncle. I think he was 
ashamed to see his cousin, too, after what he had done.” 

“ Did he talk with you on the way ? ” 

“Hot much. For half an hour or so he didn’t speak a 
^word. Then he asked where I was driving him. I told him, 
and he seemed to be surprised into a sort of grateful feeling. 
Bad enough, no doubt, — but might be worse. Has some 
humanity left in him. Let him go. God can judge him, 
— I can’t.” 

“ You are too charitable, Doctor,” the minister said. 
“I condemn him just as if he had carried out his project, 
which* they say, was to make it appear as if the schoolmaster 
had committed suicide. That’s what people think the rope 
found by him was for. He has saved his neck, — but his 
soul is a lost one, I am afraid, beyond question.” 

“ I can’t judge men’s souls,” the Doctor said. “ I can 
judge their acts, and hold them responsible for those, — but 
I don’t know much about their souls. If you or I had found 
our souls in a half-breed body, and been turned loose to run 
among the Indians, we might have been playing just such 
tricks as this fellow has been trying. What if you or I 
had inherited all the tendencies that were bom with his 
•cousin Elsie ? ” 

“ Oh, that reminds me,” — the minister said, in a sudden 
way, — “ I have received a note, which I am requested to read 
from the pulpit to-morrow. I wish you would just have the 
kindness to look at it and see where you think i-t came 
from.” 

The Doctor examined it carefully. It was a woman’s or 
girl’s note, he thought. Might come from one of the school- 
girls who was anxious about her spiritual condition. Hand- 
writing was disguised; looked a little like Elsie Venner’s, 
hut not characteristic enough to make it certain. It would 
he a new thing if she had asked public prayers for herself, 
and a very favorable indication of a change in her singular 
moral nature. It was just possible Elsie might have sent 
that note. Hobody could foretell her actions. It would be 
well to see the girl and find out whether any unusual im- 
pression had been produced on her mind by the recent oc- 
currence or by any other cause. 


A SOUL IN DISTRESS. 297" 

The Rev. Mr. Fairweather folded the note and put it into 
his pocket. 

“ I have been a good deal exercised in mind lately myself,”* 
he said. 

The old Doctor looked at him through his spectacles, and 
said, in his usual professional tone, — 

“ Put out your tongue.” 

The minister obeyed him in that feeble way common with 
persons of weak character, — for people differ as much in 
their mode of performing this trifling act as Gideon’s sol- 
diers in their way of drinking at the brook. The Doctor took 
his hand and placed a finger mechanically on his wrist. 

“ It is more spiritual, I think, than bodily,” said the Rev- 
erend Mr. Fairweather. 

“ Is your appetite as good as usual ? ” the Doctor asked. 

“ Pretty good,” the minister answered ; “ but my sleep*, 
my sleep, Doctor, — I am greatly troubled at night with lying- 
awake and thinking of my future, — I am not at ease in 
mind.” 

He looked round at all the doors, to be sure they were*- 
shut, and moved his chair up close to the Doctor’s. 

“ You do not know the mental trials I have been going 
through for the last few months.” 

“T think I do,” the old Doctor said. “You want to get 
out of the new church into the old one, don’t you ? ” 

The minister blushed deeply; he thought he had been go- 
ing on in a very quiet way, and that nobody suspected his. 
secret. As the old Doctor was his counselor in sickness*, 
and almost everybody’s confidant in trouble, he had intended 
to impart cautiously to him some hints of the change of 
sentiments through which he had been passing. He was> 
too late with his information, it appeared, and there was- 
nothing to be done but to throw himself on the Doctor’s, 
good sense and kindness, which everybody knew, and get 
what hints he could from him as to the practical course he 
should pursue. He began, after an awkward pause,— 

“You would not have me stay in a communion which I 
feel to be alien to the true church, would you ? ” 

“ Have you stay, my friend ? ” said the Doctor, with a 
pleasant, friendly look, — “have you stay? Hot a month* 
nor a week, nor a day, if I could help it. You have got into- 
the wrong pulpit, and I have known it from the first. The* 


:298 


ELSIE VENNER. 


.sooner you go where you belong, the better. And I’m very 
.glad you don’t mean to stop half-way. Don’t you know 
.you’ve always come to me when you’ve been dyspeptic or 
.sick anyhow, and wanted to put yourself wholly into my 
Rands, so that I might order you like a child just what to 
do and what to take? That’s exactly what you want in 
religion. I don’t blame you for it. You never liked to 
take the responsibility of your own body; I don’t see why 
you should want to have the charge of your own soul. But 
I’m glad you’re going to the Old Mother of all. You 
wouldn’t have been contented short of that.” 

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather breathed with more free- 
dom. The Doctor saw into his soul through those awful 
spectacles of his, — into it and beyond it, as one sees through 
.a thin fog. But it was with a real human kindness, after 
nil. He felt like a child before a strong man ; but the strong 
man looked on him with a father’s indulgence. Many and 
many a time, when he had come desponding and bemoaning 
himself on account of some contemptible bodily infirmity, 
the old Doctor had looked at him through his spectacles, 
listened patiently while he told his ailments, and then, in 
his large parental way, given him a few words of whole- 
some advice, and cheered him up so that he went off with 
.a light heart, thinking that the heaven he was so much 
afraid of was not so very near, after all. It was the same 
thing now. He felt, as feeble natures always do in the 
presence of strong ones, overmastered, circumscribed, shut 
in, humbled; but yet it seemed as if the old Doctor did not 
despise him any more for what he considered weakness of 
mind than he used to despise him when he complained of 
his nerves or his digestion. 

Men who see into their neighbors are very apt to be con- 
temptuous; but men who see through them find something 
.lying behind every human soul which it is not for them to 
:sit in judgment on, or to attempt to sneer out of* the order 
of God’s manifold universe. 

Little as the Doctor had said out of which comfort could 
I)e extracted, his genial manner had something grateful in 
it. A film of gratitude came over the poor man’s cloudy, 
uncertain eye, and a look of tremulous relief and satisfaction 
played about his weak mouth. He was gravitating to the 
majority, where he hoped to find “rest”; but he was dread- 


A SOUL IN DISTRESS. 29$ 

fully sensitive to the opinions of the minority he was on- 
the point of leaving. 

The old Doctor saw plainly enough what was going on. 
in his mind. 

“ I sha’n’t quarrel with you,” he said, — “ you know that, 
very well; but you mustn’t quarrel with me, if I talk hon- 
estly with you; it isn’t everybody that will take the trouble. 
You flatter yourself that you will make a good many ene- 
mies by leaving your old communion. Not so many as you. 
think. This is the way the common sort of people wilL 
talk: — ‘You have got your ticket to the feast of life, as- 
much as any other man that ever lived.’ Protestantism, 
says, — ‘ Help yourself ; here’s a clean plate, and a knife and. 
fork of your own, and plenty of fresh dishes to choose from/ 
The Old Mother says, — ‘ Give me your ticket, my dear, and 
I’ll feed you with my gold spoon off these beautiful old- 
wooden trenchers. Such nice bits as those good old gentle- 
men have left for you ! ’ 1 There is no quarreling with a 

man who prefers broken victuals.’ That’s what the rougher- 
sort will say; and then, where one scolds, ten will laugh.. 
But, mind you, I don’t either scold or laugh. I don’t feel 
sure that you could very well have helped doing what you-' 
will soon do. You know you were never easy without some 
medicine to take when you felt ill in body. I’m afraid I’ve- 
given you trashy stuff sometimes, just to keep you quiet.. 
Now, let me tell you, there is just the same difference in. 
spiritual patients that there is in bodily ones. One set be- 
lieves in wholesome ways of living, and another must have 1 
a great list of specifics for all the soul’s complaints. You 
belong with the last, and got accidentally shuffled in with 
the others.” 

The minister smiled faintly, but did not reply. Of course,, 
he considered that way of talking as the result of the Doc- 
tor’s professional training. Tt would not have been worth 
while to take offense at his plain speech, if he had been so- 
disposed; for he might wish to consult him the next day 
as to “ what he should take ” for his dyspepsia or his neu- 
ralgia. 

He left the Doctor with a hollow feeling at the bottom of 
his soul, as if a good piece of his manhood had been scooped, 
out of him. His hollow aching did not explain itself irt 
words, but it grumbled and worried down among the un- 


300 


ELSIE VEKNER. 


shaped thoughts which lie beneath them. He knew that he 
had been trying to reason himself out of his birthright of 
reason. He knew that the inspiration which gave him. 
understanding was losing its throne in his intelligence, and 
the almighty Majority- Vote was proclaiming itself in its 
stead. He knew that the great primal truths, which each 
successive revelation only confirmed, were fast becoming hid- 
den beneath the mechanical forms of thought, which, as with 
all new converts, engrossed so large a share of his atten- 
tion. The “ peace,” the “ rest,” which he had purchased, 
were dearly bought to one who had been trained to the arms 
of thought, and whose noble privilege it might have been to 
live in perpetual warfare for the advancing truth which the 
next generation will claim as the legacy of the present. 

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather was getting careless about 
his sermons. He must wait the fitting moment to declare 
tiimself ; and in the mean time he was preaching to heretics. 
It did not matter much what he preached, under such cir- 
cumstances. He pulled out two old yellow sermons from a 
heap of such, and began looking over that for the forenoon. 
Naturally enough he fell asleep over it, and, sleeping, he 
hegan to dream. 

He dreamed that he was under the high arches of an old 
•cathedral, amidst a throng of worshipers. The light streamed 
in through vast windows, dark with the purple robes of royal 
saints, or blazing with yellow glories around the heads of 
earthly martyrs and heavenly messengers. The billows of 
the great organ roared among the clustered columns, as the 
sea breaks amidst the basaltic pillars which crowd the stormy 
•cavern of the Hebrides. The voice of the alternate choirs 
of singing boys swung back and forward, as the silver censer 
swung in the hands of the white-robed children. The sweet 
•cloud of incense rose in soft, fleecy mists, full of penetrating 
suggestions of the East and its perfumed altars. The knees 
of twenty generations had worn the pavement ; their feet had 
hollowed the steps; their shoulders had smoothed the col- 
umns. Dead bishops and abbots lay under the marble of the 
“floor in their crumbled vestments; dead warriors, in rusted 
armor, were stretched beneath their sculptured effigies. And 
all at once all the buried multitudes who had ever worshiped 
there came thronging in through the aisles. They choked 
jevery space, they swarmed into all the chapels, they hung in 


A SOUL IN DISTRESS. 


301 

clusters over the parapets of the galleries, they clung to the- 
images in every niche, and still the vast throng kept flowing- 
and flowing in, until the living were lost in the rush of the 
returning dead who had reclaimed their own. Then, as his 
dream became more fantastic, the huge cathedral itself 
seemed to change into the wreck of some mighty antedilu- 
vian vertebrate; its flying-buttresses arched round like ribs, 
its piers shaped themselves into limbs, and the sound of the 
organ-blast changed to the wind whistling through its 
thousand- jointed skeleton. 

And presently the sound lulled, and softened and softened, 
until it was as the murmur of a distant swarm of bees. A pro- 
cession of monks wound along through an old street, chant- 
ing, as they walked. In his dream he glided in among 
them and bore his part in the burden of their song. He 
entered with the long train under a low arch, and presently 
he was kneeling in a narrow cell before an image of the 
Blessed Maiden holding the Divine Child in her arms, and 
his lips seemed to whisper, — 

Sancta Maria , ora pro nobis! 

He turned to the crucifix, and, prostrating himself before 
the spare, agonizing shape of the Holy Sufferer, fell into a 
long passion of tears and broken prayers. He rose and 
flung himself, worn-out, upon his hard pallet, and, seeming- 
to slumber, dreamed again within his dream. Once more 
in the vast cathedral, with throngs of the living choking its 
aisles, amidst jubilant peals from the cavernous depths of 
the great organ, and choral melodies ringing from the fluty 
throats of the singing boys. A day of great rejoicings, — for 
a prelate was to be consecrated, and the bones of the mighty 
skeleton-minster were shaking with anthems, as if there 
were life of its own within its buttressed ribs. He looked 
down at his feet; the folds of the sacred robe were flowing 
about them: he put his hand to his head; it was crowned 
with the holy miter. A long sigh, as of perfect content in 
the consummation of all his earthly hopes, breathed through 
the dreamer’s lips, and shaped itself, as it escaped, into the 
blissful murmur, — 


Ego sum Episcopus! 


ELSIE VENNER. 


302 


One grinning gargoyle looked in from beneath the roof 
through an opening in a stained window. It was the face of 
a mocking fiend, such as the old builders loved to place under 
the eaves to spout the rain through their open mouths. It 
looked at him, as he sat in his mitered chair, with its hideous 
grin growing broader and broader, until it laughed out aloud, 
— such a hard, stony, mocking laugh, that he awoke out of 
his second dream through his first into his common con- 
sciousness, and shivered, as he turned to the two yellow ser- 
mons which he was to pick over and weed of the little 
thought they might contain, for the next day’s service. 

The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather was too much taken 
up with his own bodily and spiritual condition to be deeply 
mindful of others. He carried the note requesting the pray- 
ers of the congregation in his pocket all day; and the soul 
in distress, which a single tender petition might have soothed, 
and perhaps have saved from despair and fatal error, found 
no voice in the temple to plead for it before the Throne of 
Mercy ! 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


THE SECRET IS WHISPERED. 

The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather’s congregation was not 
large, but select. The lines of social cleavage run through 
religious creeds as if they were of a piece with position and 
fortune. It is expected of persons of a certain breeding, in 
some parts of New England, that they shall be either Episco- 
palians or Unitarians. The mansion-house gentry of Rock- 
land were pretty fairly divided between the little chapel with 
the stained window and the trained rector, and the meeting- 
house where the Reverend Mr. Fairweather officiated. 

It was in the latter that Dudley Venner worshiped, when 
he attended service anywhere, — which depended very much 
upon the caprice of Elsie. He saw plainly enough that a gen- 
erous and liberally cultivated nature might find a refuge and 
congenial souls in either of these two persuasions, but he ob- 
jected to some points of the formal creed of the older church, 
and especially to the mechanism which renders it hard to get 
free from its outworn and offensive formulae, — remembering 
how Archbishop Tillotson wished in vain that it could be 
u well rid of ” the Athanasian Creed. This, and the fact 
that the meeting-house was nearer than the chapel deter- 
mined him, when the new rector, who was not quite up to his 
mark in education, was appointed, to take a pew in the “ lib- 
eral ” worshipers’ edifice. 

Elsie was very uncertain in her feeling about going to 
church. In summer she loved rather to stroll over The 
Mountain, on Sundays. There was even a story, that she 
had one of the caves before mentioned fitted up as an oratory, 
and that she had her own wild way of worshiping the God 
whom she sought in the dark chasms of the dreaded cliffs. 
Mere fables, doubtless; but they showed the common belief, 
that Elsie, with all her strange and dangerous elements of 
character, had yet strong religious feeling mingled with 
Ihem. The hymn-book which Dick had found, in his mid- 
night invasion of her chamber, opened to favorite hymns,, 


303 


304 


ELSIE VENDER. 


especially some of the Methodist and Quietest character; 
Many had noticed that certain tunes, as sung by the choir* 
seemed to impress her deeply; and some said, that at such 
times her whole expression would change, and her stormy 
look would soften so as to remind them of her poor, sweet 
mother. 

On the Sunday morning after the talk recorded in the last 
chapter, Elsie made herself ready to go to meeting. She was 
dressed much as usual, excepting that she wore a thick veil, 
turned aside, but ready to conceal her features. It was nat- 
ural enough that she should not wish to be looked in the face 
by curious persons who would be staring to see what effect 
the occurrence of the past week had had on her spirits. Her 
father attended her willingly; and they took their seats in 
the pew, somewhat to the surprise of many, who had hardly 
expected to see them, after so humiliating a family develop- 
ment as the attempted crime of their kinsman had just been 
furnishing for the astonishment of the public. 

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather was now in his coldest 
mood. He had passed through the period of feverish excite- 
ment which marks a change of religious opinion. At first* 
when he had begun to doubt his own theological positions, he 
had defended them against himself with more ingenuity and 
interest, perhaps, than he could have done against another; 
because men rarely take the trouble to understand anybody’s 
difficulties in a question but their own. After this, after he 
began to draw off from different points of his old belief, 
the cautious disentangling of himself from one mesh after 
another gave sharpness to his intellect, and the tremulous 
eagerness with which he seized upon the doctrine which, piece 
by piece, under various pretexts and with various disguises, he 
was appropriating, gave interest and something like passion 
to his words. But when he had gradually accustomed his 
people to his new phraseology, and was really adjusting his 
sermons and his service to disguise his thoughts, he lost at 
once all his intellectual acuteness and all his spiritual 
fervor. 

Elsie sat quietly through the first part of the service, which 
was conducted in the cold, mechanical way to be expected* 
Her face was hidden by her veil; but her father knew her 
state of feeling, as well by her movements and attitudes as by 
the expression of her features. The hymn had been sung, the 


THE SECRET IS WHISPERED. 305 

short prayer offered, the Bible read, and the long prayer was 
about to begin. This was the time at which the “ notes ” of 
any who were in affliction from loss of friends, the sick who 
were doubtful of recovery, those who had cause to be grateful 
for preservation of life, or other signal blessing, were wont to 
he read. 

Just then it was that Dudley Venner noticed that his 
daughter was trembling, — a thing so rare, so unaccountable, 
indeed, under the circumstances, that he watched her closely, 
and began to fear that some nervous paroxysm, or other mal- 
ady, might have just begun to show itself in this way upon 
her. 

The minister had in his pocket two notes. One, in the hand- 
writing of Deacon Soper, was from a member of this con- 
gregation, returning thanks for his preservation through a 
season of great peril, — supposed to be the exposure which he 
had shared with others, when standing in the circle around 
Dick Venner. The other was the anonymous one, in a female 
hand, which he had received the evening before. He forgot 
them both. His thoughts were altogether too much taken up 
with more important matters. He prayed through all the 
frozen petitions of his expurgated form of supplication, and 
not a single heart was soothed or lifted, or reminded that its 
sorrows were struggling their way up to heaven, borne on 
the breath from a human soul that was warm with love. 

The people sat down as if relieved when the dreary prayer 
was finished. Elsie alone remained standing until her father 
touched her. Then she sat down, lifted her veil, and looked 
at him with a blank, sad look, as if she had suffered some 
pain or wrong, but could not give any name or expression to 
her vague trouble. She did not tremble any longer, but re- 
mained ominously still, as if she had been frozen where she 
sat. 

Can a man love his own soul too well? Who, on the 

whole, constitute the nobler class of human beings? those 
who have lived mainly to make sure of their own personal 
welfare in another and future condition of existence, or they 
who have worked with all their might for their race, for their 
country, for the advancement of the kingdom of God, and left 
all personal arrangements concerning themselves to the sole 
charge of Him who made them and is responsible to Himself 
for their safe-keeping? Is an anchorite who has worn tho 


306 


ELSIE VENNEK. 


stone floor of his cell into basins with his knees bent in?, 
prayer, more acceptable than the soldier who gives his life for* 
the maintenance of any sacred right or truth, without think- 
ing what will specially become of him in a world where there 
are two or three million colonists a month, from this one 
planet, to be cared for? These are grave questions, which 
must suggest themselves to those who know that there are 
many profoundly selfish persons who are sincerely devout and 
perpetually occupied with their own future, while there are 
others who are perfectly ready to sacrifice themselves for any 
worthy object in this world, but are really too little occupied. 
with their exclusive personality to think so much as many do 
about what is to become of them in another. 

The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather did not, most cer- 
tainly, belong to this latter class. There are several kinds 
of believers, whose history we find among the early converts, 
to Christianity. 

There was the magistrate, whose social position was such, 
that he preferred a private interview in the evening with the 
Teacher to following him with the street-crowd. He had’ 
seen extraordinary facts which had satisfied him that the 
young Galilean had a divine commission. But still he cross- 
questioned the Teacher himself. He was not ready to accept 
statements without explanation. That was the right kind of' 
man. See how he stood up for the legal rights of his Master 
when the people were for laying hands on him ! 

And again, there was the government official, intrusted with, 
public money, which, in those days, implied that he was sup- 
posed to be honest. A single look of that heavenly counte- 
nance, and two words of gentle command, were enough for 
him. Neither of those men, the early disciple nor the evan- 
gelist, seems to have been thinking primarily about his own 
personal safety. 

But now look at the poor, miserable turnkey, whose occupa- 
tion shows what he was like to be, and who had just been 
thrusting two respectable strangers, taken from the hands of’ 
a mob, covered with stripes and stripped of clothing, into the 
inner prison, and making their feet fast in the stocks. His 
thought, in the moment of terror, is for himself : first, suicide 
then, what he shall do, — not to save his household, — not to. 
fulfill his duty to his office, — not to repair the outrage he has. 
been committing, — but to secure his own personal safety. 


THE SECRET IS WHISPERED. 307 

Truly, character shows itself as much in a man’s way of 
becoming a Christian as in any other ! 

Elsie sat, statue-like, through the sermon. It would 

not be fair to the reader to give an abstract of that. When a 
man who has been bred to free thought and free speech sud- 
denly finds himself stepping about, like a dancer amidst his 
eggs, among the old addled majority-votes which he must not 
tread upon, he is a spectacle for men and angels. Submission 
to intellectual precedent and authority does very well for 
those who have been bred to it; we know that the under- 
ground courses of their minds are laid in the Roman cement 
of tradition, and that stately and splendid structures may be 
Teared on such a foundation. But to see one laying a plat- 
form over heretical quicksands, thirty or forty or fifty years 
xleep, and then beginning to build upon it, is a sorry sight. 
A new convert from the reformed to the ancient faith may 
be very strong in the arms, but he will always have weak legs 
and shaky knees. He may use his hands well, and hit hard 
with his fists, but he will never stand on his legs in the way 
the man does who inherits his belief. 

The services were over at last, and Dudley Yenner and his 
daughter walked home together in silence. He always 
respected her moods, and saw clearly enough that some inward 
trouble was weighing upon her. There was nothing to be 
said in such cases, for Elsie could never talk of her griefs. 
An hour, or a day, or a week of brooding, with perhaps a 
•sudden flash of violence: this was the way in which the im- 
pressions which make other women weep, and tell their griefs 
by word or letter, showed their effects in her mind and acts. 

She wandered off up into the remoter parts of The Moun- 
tain, that day, after their return. No one saw just where she 
went, — indeed, no one knew its forest-recesses and rocky fast- 
nesses as she did. She was gone until late at night; and 
when Old Sophy, who had watched for her, bound up her long 
hair for her sleep, it was damp with the cold dews. 

The old black woman looked at her without speaking, but 
-questioning her with every feature as to the sorrow that was 
weighing on her. 

Suddenly she turned to Old Sophy. 

“ You want to know what there is troubling me,” she said. 
,J(l Nobody loves me. I cannot love anybody. What is love* 
-Sophy ? ” 


308 


ELSIE VENNER. 


“ It’s what poor OP Sophy’s got for her Elsie,” the old 
woman answered. “ Tell me, darlin’, — don’ you love some- 
body? — don’ you love ? you know, — oh, tell me, darling 

don’ you love to see the gen’l’man that keeps up at the school 
where you go ? They say he’s the pootiest gen’l’man that was- 
ever in the town here. Don’ be ’fraid of poor 01’ Sophy, 
darlin’, — she loved a man once, — see here! Oh, I’ve showed 
you this often enough ! ” 

She took from her pocket a half of one of the old Spanish- 
silver coins, such as were current in the earlier part of this 
century. The other half of it had been lying in the deep 
sea-sand for more than fifty years. 

Elsie looked her in the face, but did not answer in words. 
What strange intelligence was that which passed between 
them through the diamond eyes and the little beady black 
ones ? — what subtle intercommunication penetrating so much 
deeper than articulate speech ? This was the nearest approach 
to sympathetic relations that Elsie ever had : a kind of dumb 
intercourse of feeling, such as one sees in the eyes of brute 
mothers looking on their young. But, subtle as it was, it 
was narrow and individual; whereas an emotion which can 
shape itself in language opens the gate for itself into the 
great community of human affections; for every word we 
speak is the medal of a dead thought or feeling, struck in 
the die of some human experience, worn smooth by innumer- 
able contacts, and always transferred warm from one to 
another. By words we share the common consciousness of 
the race, which ha« shaped itself in these symbols. By music 
we reach those special states of consciousness which, being- 
without form, cannot be shaped with the mosaics of the 
vocabulary. The language of the eyes runs deeper into the 
personal nature, but it is purely individual, and perishes in 
the expression. If we consider them all as growing out of’ 
the consciousness as their root, language is the leaf, music 
is the flower; but when the eyes meet and search each other, 
it is the uncovering of the blanched stem through which the 
whole life runs, but which has never taken color or form from 
the sunlight. 

For three days Elsie did not return to the school. Much 
of the time she was among the woods and rocks. The season 
was now beginning to wane, and the forest to put on its 
autumnal glory. The dreamy haze was beginning to soften. 


THE SECRET IS WHISPERED. 


309 


the landscape, and the most delicious days of the year were 
lending their attraction to the scenery of The Mountain. It 
~was not very singular that Elsie should be lingering in her 
old haunts, from which the change of season must soon drive 
her. But Old Sophy saw clearly enough that some internal 
conflict was going on, and knew very well that it must have its 
own way and work itself out as it best could. As much as 
looks could tell Elsie had told her. She had said in words, 
to be sure, that she could not love. Something warped and 
thwarted the emotion which would have been love in another, 
no doubt; but that such an emotion was striving with her 
against all malign influences which interfered with it the old 
woman had a perfect certainty in her own mind. 

Everybody who has observed the working of emotions in 
persons of various temperaments knows well enough that they 
have periods of incubation, which differ with the individual, 
and with the particular cause and degree of excitement, yet 
evidently go through a strictly self -limited series of evolu- 
tions, at the end of which, their result — an act of violence, a 
paroxysm of tears, a gradual subsidence into repose, or what- 
ever it may be — declares itself, like the last stage of an attack 
of fever and ague. No one can observe children without 
noticing that there is a personal equation, to use the astron- 
omer’s language, in their tempers, so that one sulks an hour 
over an offense which makes another a fury for five minutes, 
and leaves him or her an angel when it is over. 

At the end of three days Elsie braided her long, glossy, 
black hair, and shot a golden arrow through it. She dressed 
herself with more than usual care, and came down in the 
morning superb in her stormy beauty. The brooding 
paroxysm was over, or at least her passion had changed its 
phase. Her father saw it with great relief; he had always 
many fears for her in her hours and days of gloom, but, for 
reasons before assigned, had felt that she must be trusted to 
herself, without appealing to actual restraint, or any other 
supervision than such as Old Sophy could exercise without 
offense. 

She went off at the accustomed hour to the school. All the 
girls had their eyes on her. None so keen as these young 
misses to know an inward movement by an outward sign of 
adornment : if they have not as many signals as the ships that 
.sail the great seas, there is not an end of ribbon or a turn of a. 


310 


ELSIE VENNEK. 


ringlet which is not a hieroglyphic with a hidden meaning 
to these little cruisers over the ocean of sentiment. 

The girls all looked at Elsie with a new thought; for she 
was more sumptuously arrayed than perhaps ever before at the 
school; and they said to themselves that she had come mean- 
ing to draw the young master’s eyes upon her. That was it;, 
what else could it be? The beautiful cold girl with the 
diamond eyes meant to dazzle the handsome young gentleman^ 
He would be afraid to love her ; it couldn’t be true, that which, 
some people had said in the village; she wasn’t the kind of 
young lady to make Mr. Langdon happy. Those dark people 
are never safe: so one of the young blondes said to herself- 
Elsie was not literary enough for such a scholar: so thought 
Miss Charlotte Ann Wood, the young poetess. She couldn’t 
have a good temper, with those scowling eyebrows: this was 
the opinion of several broad-faced, smiling girls, who thought* 
each in her own snug little mental sanctum, that if, etc., etc.* 
she could make him so happy ! 

Elsie had none of the still, wicked light in her eyes, that 
morning. She looked gentle, but dreamy; played with her 
books; did not trouble herself with any of the exercises, — 
which in itself was not very remarkable, as she was always, 
allowed, under some pretext or other, to have her own. 
way. 

The school-hours were over at length. The girls went out,, 
but she lingered to the last. She then came up to Mr.. 
Bernard, with a book in her hand, as if to ask a question. 

“Will you walk towards my home with me to-day?” she 
said, in a very low voice, little more than a whisper. 

Mr. Bernard was startled by the request, put in such a 
way. He had a presentiment of some painful scene or other. 
But there was nothing to be done but to assure her that if 
would give him great pleasure. 

So they walked along together on their way toward the. 
Dudley mansion. 

“ I have no friend,” Elsie said, all at once. “ Nothing loves 
me but one old woman. I cannot love anybody. They tell 
me there is something in my eyes that draws people to me 
and makes them faint. Look into them, will you ? ” 

She turned her face toward him. It was very pale, and 
the diamond eyes were glittering with a film, such as beneath, 
other lids would have rounded into a tear. 


THE SECRET IS WHISPERED. 


311 


“ Beautiful eyes, Elsie,” he said, — “ sometimes very pierc- 
ing, — but soft now, and looking as if there were something 
beneath them that friendship might draw out. I am your 
friend, Elsie. Tell me what I can do to render your life 
happier.” 

“ Love me! ” said Elsie Venner. 

What shall a man do, when a woman makes such a demand, 
involving such an avowal? It was the tenderest, cruelest, 
humblest moment of Mr. Bernard’s life. He turned pale, he 
trembled almost, as if he had been a woman listening to her 
lover’s declaration. 

“ Elsie,” he said, presently, “ I so long to be of some use to 
you, to have your confidence and sympathy, that I must not 
let you say or do anything to put us in false relations. I do 
love you, Elsie, as a suffering sister with sorrows of her own, — 
as one whom I would save at the risk of my happiness and 
life, — as one who needs a true friend more than any of all the 
young girls I have known. More than this you would not 
ask me to say. You have been through excitement and 
trouble lately, and it has made you feel such a need more than 
ever. Give me your hand, dear Elsie, and trust me that I will 
be as true a friend to you as if we were children of the same 
mother.” 

Elsie gave him her hand mechanically. It seemed to him 
that a cold aura shot from it along his arm and chilled the 
blood running through his heart. He pressed it gently, looked 
at her with a face full of grave kindness and sad interest, then 
softly relinquished it. 

It was all over with poor Elsie. They walked almost in 
silence the rest of the way. Mr. Bernard left her at the gate 
of the mansion-house, and returned with sad forebodings. 
Elsie went at once to her own room, and did not come from 
it at the usual hours. At last Old Sophy began to be alarmed 
about her, went to her apartment, and, finding the door un- 
locked, entered cautiously. She found Elsie lying on her 
bed, her brows strongly contracted, her eyes dull, her whole 
look that of great suffering. Her first thought was that she 
had been doing herself a harm by some deadly means or other. 
But Elsie saw her fear, and reassured her. 

“ No,” she said, “ there is nothing wrong, such as you are 
thinking of ; I am not dying. You may send for the Doctor; 
perhaps he can take the pain from my head. That is all I 


ELSIE TENNER. 


312 

want him to do. There is no use in the pain, that I know of; 
if he can stop it, let him.” 

So they sent for the old Doctor. It was not long before 
the solid trot of Caustic, the old bay horse, and the crashing 
of the gravel under the wheels, gave notice that the physician 
was driving up the avenue. 

The old Doctor was a model for visiting practitioners. He 
always came into the sick room with a quiet, cheerful look, 
as if he had a consciousness that Ke was bringing some sure 
relief with him. The way a patient snatches his first look 
at his doctor’s face, to see whether he is doomed, whether he is 
reprieved, whether he is unconditionally pardoned, has really 
something terrible about it. It is only to be met by an im- 
perturbable mask of serenity, proof against anything and 
everything in a patient’s aspect. The physician whose face 
reflects his patient’s condition like a mirror may do well 
enough to examine people for a life-insurance office, but does 
not belong to the sick room. The old Doctor did not keep 
people waiting in dread suspense, while he stayed talking 
about the case, — the patient all the time thinking that he and 
the friends are discussing some alarming symptom or formid- 
able operation which he himself is by-and-by to hear of. 

He was in Elsie’s room almost before she knew he was in 
the house. He came to her bedside in such a natural, quiet 
way, that it seemed as if he were only a friend who had 
dropped in for a moment to say a pleasant word. Yet he was 
very uneasy about Elsie until he had seen her ; he never knew 
what might happen to her or those about her, and came pre- 
pared for the worst. 

“ Sick, my child ? ” he said, in a very soft, low voice. 

Elsie nodded, without speaking. 

The Doctor took her hand, — whether with professional 
views, or only in a friendly way, it would have been hard to 
tell. So he sat a few minutes, looking at her all the time 
with a kind of fatherly interest, but with it all noting how 
she lay, how she breathed, her color, her expression, all that 
teaches the practiced eye so much without a single question 
being asked. He saw she was in suffering, and said 
presently, — 

“ You have pain somewhere; where is it? ” 

She put her hand to her head. 

As she was not disposed to talk, he watched her for a while. 


THE SECRET IS WHISPERED. 


313 


questioned Old Sophy shrewdly a few minutes, and so made 
up his mind as to the probable cause of disturbance and the 
proper remedies to be used. 

Some very silly people thought the old Doctor did not 
believe in medicine, because he gave less than certain poor 
half-taught creatures in the smaller neighboring towns, who 
took advantage of people’s sickness to disgust and disturb 
them with all manner of ill-smelling and ill-behaving drugs. 
In truth, he hated to give anything noxious or loathsome to 
those who were uncomfortable enough already, unless he was 
very sure it would do good, — in which case, he never played 
with drugs, but gave good, honest, efficient doses. Sometimes 
he lost a family of the more boorish sort, because they did not 
think they got their money’s worth out of him, unless they 
had something more than a taste of everything he carried in 
his saddle-bags. 

He ordered some remedies which he thought would relieve 
Elsie, and left her, saying he would call the next day, hoping 
to find her better. But the next day came, and the next, and 
Still Elsie was on her bed, — feverish, restless, wakeful, silent. 
At night she tossed about and wandered, and it became at 
length apparent that there was a settled attack, something like 
what they called formerly, a “ nervous fever.” 

On the fourth day she was more restless than common. 
One of the women of the house came in to help to take care 
of her ; but she showed an aversion to her presence. 

“ Send me Helen Darley,” she said, at last. 

The old Doctor told them, that, if possible, they must in- 
dulge this fancy of hers. The caprices of sick people were 
never to be despised, least of all of such persons as Elsie, when, 
rendered irritable and exacting by pain and weakness. 

So a message was sent to Mr. Silas Peckham, at the Apol- 
linean Institute, to know if he could not spare Miss Helen 
Darley for a few days, if required, to give her attention to a 
young lady who attended his school and who was now lying* 
ill, — no other person than the daughter of Dudley Venner. 

A mean man never agrees to anything without deliberately 
turning it over, so that he may see its dirty side, and, if h& 
can, sweating the coin he pays for it. If an archangel should 
offer to save his soul for sixpence, he would try to find a six- 
pence with a hole in it.* A gentleman says yes to a great 
many things without stopping to think: a shabby fellow is- 


314 


ELSIE VENNER. 


known by his caution in answering questions, for fear of 
compromising his pocket or himself. 

Mr. Silas Peckham looked very grave at the request. The 
dooties of Miss Darley at the Institoot were important, very 
important. He paid her large sums of money for her time, — 
more than she could expect to get in any other institootion 
for the edoocation of female youth. A deduction from her 
selary would be necessary, in case she should retire from the 
sphere of her dooties for a season. He should be put to extry 
expense, and have to perform additional labors himself. He 
would consider of the matter. If any agreement could be 
made, he would send word to Squire Venner’s folks. 

“ Miss Darley,” said Silas Peckham, “ the’ ’s a message 
from Squire Yenner’s that his daughter wants you down at 
the mansion-house to see her. She’s got a fever, so they in- 
form me. If it’s any kind of ketchin’ fever, of course you 
won’t think of goin’ near the mansion-house. If Doctor Kit- 
tredge says it’s safe, perfec’ly safe, I can’t objec’ to your 
goin’, on sech conditions as seem to be fair to all concerned. 
You will give up your pay for the whole time you are ab- 
sent, — portions of days to be caounted as whole days. You 
will be charged with board the same as if you eat your 
victuals with the household. The victuals are of no use after 
they’re cooked to be eat, and your bein’ away is no savin’ 
to our folks. I shall charge you a reasonable compensation 
for the demage to the school by the absence of a teacher. If 
Miss Crabs undertakes any dooties belongin’ to your depart- 
ment of instruction, she will look to you for sech pecooniary 
considerations as you may agree upon between you. On these 
conditions I am willin’ to give my consent to your temporary 
absence from the post of dooty. I will step down to Doctor 
Kittredge’s, myself, and make inquiries as to the natur’ of 
the complaint.” 

Mr. Peckham took up a rusty and very narrow-brimmed 
hat, which he cocked upon one side of his head, with an air 
peculiar to the rural gentry. It was the hour when the 
Doctor expected to be in his office, unless he had some special 
call which kept him from home. 

He found the Keverend Chauncy Fairweather just taking 
leave of the Doctor. His hand was on the pit of his stomach, 
and his countenance was expressive of inward uneasiness. 

“ Shake it before using,” said the Doctor ; “ and the sooner 


THE SECRET IS WHISPERED. 315 

you make up your mind to speak right out, the better it will 
be for your digestion. 

“ Oh, Mr. Peckham! Walk in, Mr. Peckham! Nobody 
sick up at the school, I hope ? ” 

“ The haalth of the school is fust-rate,” replied Mr. Peck- 
ham. “ The sitooation is uncommonly favorable to saloo- 
brity.” (These last words were from the Annual Report of 
the past year). “ Providence has spared our female youth 
in a remarkable measure. I’ve come with reference to another 
consideration. Doctor Kittredge, is there any ketchin’ com- 
plaint goin’ about in the village ? ” 

“ Well, yes,” said the Doctor, “ I should say there was some- 
thing of that sort. Measles. Mumps. And Sin, — that’s 
always catching.” 

The old Doctor’s eye twinkled; once in a while he had his 
little touch of humor. 

Silas Peckham slanted his eye up suspiciously at the Doc- 
tor, as if he was getting some kind of advantage over him. 

That is the way people of his constitution are apt to take a 
bit of pleasantry. 

“ I don’t mean sech things. Doctor ; I mean fevers. Is 
there any ketchin’ fevers — bilious, or nervous, or typhus, or 
whatever you call ’em — now goin’ round this village ? That’s 
what I want to ascertain, if there’s no impropriety.” 

The old Doctor looked at Silas through his spectacles. 

“ Hard and sour as a green cider-apple,” he thought to him- 
self. “ No,” he said, — “ I don’t know any such cases.” 

“ What’s the matter with Elsie Venner?” asked Silas, 
sharply, as if he expected to have him this time. 

“ A mild feverish attack, I should call it in anybody else; 
but she has a peculiar constitution, and I never feel so safe 
about her as I should about most people.” 

“ Anything ketchin’ about it ? ” Silas asked, cunningly. 

“No, indeed!” said the Doctor, — “catching? — no, — what 
put that into your head, Mr. Peckham ? ” 

“ Well, Doctor,” the conscientious Principal answered, “ I 
naturally feel a graat responsibility, a very graat responsi- 
bility, for the noomerous and lovely young ladies committed 
to my charge. It has been a question, whether one of my 
assistants should go, accordin’ to request, to stop with Miss 
Venner for a season. Nothin’ restrains my givin’ my full 
and free consent to her goin’ but the fear lest contagious 


316 


ELSIE VENNER. 


maladies should be introdooced among those lovely female 
youth. I shall abide by your opinion, — I understan’ you to 
say distinc’ly, her complaint is not ketchin’ ? — and urge upon 
Miss Darley to fulfill her dooties to a sufferin’ fellow-creature 
at any cost to myself and my establishment. We shall miss 
her very much; but it is a good cause, and she shall go, — and 
I shall trust that Providence will enable us to spare her with- 
out permanent demage to the interests of the Institootion.” 

Saying this, the excellent Principal departed, with his rusty 
narrow-brimmed hat leaning over, as if it had a six-knot 
breeze abeam, and its gunwale (so to speak) was dipping into 
his coat-collar. He announced the result of his inquiries to 
Helen, who had received a brief note in the mean time from 
a poor relation of Elsie’s mother, then at the mansion-house, 
informing her of the critical situation of Elsie and of her 
urgent desire that Helen should be with her. She could not 
hesitate. She blushed as she thought of the comments that 
might be made; but what were such considerations in a 
matter of life and death? She could not stop to make terms 
with Silas Peckham. She must go. He might fleece her, 
if he would; she would not complain, — not even to Bernard, 
who, she knew, would bring the Principal to terms, if she 
gave the least hint of his intended extortions. 

•So Helen made up her bundle of clothes to be sent after her, 
took a book or two with her to help her pass the time, and 
departed for the Dudley mansion. It was with a great inward 
effort that she undertook the sisterly task which was thus 
forced upon her. She had a kind of terror of Elsie ; and the 
thought of having charge of her, of being alone with her, of 
coming under the full influence of those diamond eyes, — if, 
indeed, their light were not dimmed by suffering and weari- 
ness, — was one she shrank from. But what could she do? 
It might be a turning-point in the life of the poor girl; and 
she must overcome all her fears, all her repugnance, and go 
to her rescue. 

“ Is Helen come ? ” said Elsie, when she heard, with her 
fine sense quickened by the irritability of sickness, a light 
footfall on the stair, with a cadence unlike that of any inmate 
of the house. 

“ It’s a strange woman’s step,” said Old Sophy, who, with 
her exclusive love for Elsie, was naturally disposed to jealousy 
of a new-comer. “Let 01’ Sophy set at th’ foot o’ th’ bed. 


THE SECRET IS WHISPERED. 317 

if th’ young missis sets by th’ piller, — won’ y’, darlin’ ? The’ 
5 s nobody that’s white can love y’ as th’ ol’ black woman does ; 
— don’ sen’ her away, now, there’s a dear soul ! ” 

Elsie motioned her to sit in the place she had pointed 
to, and Helen at that moment entered the room. Dudley 
Venner followed her. 

“ She is your patient,” he said, “ except while the Doctor is 
here. She had been longing to have you with her, and we 
shall expect you to make her well in a few days.” 

So Helen Darley found herself established in the most un- 
expected manner as an inmate of the Dudley mansion. She 
sat with Elsie most of the time, by day and by night, soothing 
her, and trying to enter into her confidence and affections, 
if it should prove that this strange creature was really capable 
of truly sympathetic emotions. 

What was this unexplained something which came between 
her soul and that of every other human being with whom 
she was in relations? Helen perceived, or rather felt, that 
she had, folded up in the depths of her being, a true womanly 
nature. Through the cloud that darkened her aspect, now 
and then a ray would steal forth, which, like the smile of 
stern and solemn people, was all the more impressive from its 
contrast with the expression she wore habitually. It might 
well be that pain and fatigue had changed her aspect; but, 
at any rate, Helen looked into her eyes without that nervous 
agitation which their cold glitter had produced on her when 
they were full of their natural light. She felt sure that her 
mother must have been a loyely, gentle woman. There were 
gleams of a beautiful nature shining through some ill-defined 
medium which disturbed and made them flicker and waver, 
as distant images do .when seen through the rippling upward 
currents of heated air. She loved, in her own way, the old 
black woman, and seemed to keep up a kind of silent com- 
munication with her, as if they did not require the use of 
speech. She appeared to be tranquilized by the presence of 
Helen, and loved to have her seated at the bedside. Yet 
something, whatever it was, prevented her from opening her 
heart to her kind companion ; and even now there were times 
when she would lie looking at her, with such a still, watchful, 
almost dangerous expression, that Helen would sigh, and 
change her place, as persons do whose breath some cunning 
orator has been sucking out of them with his spongy elo- 


318 


ELSIE VEKNER. 


quence, so that, when he stops, they must get some air and 
stir about, or they feel as if they should be half smothered 
and palsied. 

It was too much to keep guessing what was the meaning 
of all this. Helen determined to ask Old Sophy some ques- 
tions which might probably throw light upon her doubts. She 
took the opportunity one evening when Elsie was lying asleep 
and they were both sitting at some distance from her bed. 

“ Tell me, Sophy,” she said, “ was Elsie always as shy as 
she seems to be now, in talking with those to whom she is 
friendly ? ” 

“ Always jes’ so. Miss Darling ever sence she was little chil.’ 
When she was five, six year old, she lisp some, — call me 
Thophy; that make her kin’ o’ ’shamed, perhaps: after she 
grow up, she never lisp, but she kin’ o’ got the way o’ not 
talkin’ much. Fac’ is, she don’ like talkin’ as common gals 
do, ’excep’ jes’ once in a while wi’ some partic’lar folks, — ’n’ 
then not much.” 

“ How old is Elsie?” 

“ Eighteen year this las’ September.” 

“ How long ago did her mother die ? ” Helen asked, with 
a little trembling in her voice. 

“ Eighteen year ago this October,” said Old Sophy. 

Helen was silent for a moment. Then she whispered, al- 
most inaudibly, — for her voice appeared to fail her, 

“ What did her mother die of, Sophy ? ” 

The old woman’s small eyes dilated until a ring of white 
showed round their beady centers. She caught Helen by the 
hand and clung to it, as if in fear. She looked round at 
Elsie, who lay sleeping, as if she might be listening. Then 
she drew Helen towards her and led her softly out of the 
room. 

“ ’Sh ! — ’sh ! ” she said, as soon as they were outside the 
door. “Hon’ never speak in this house ’bout what Elsie’s 
mother died of!” she said. “Nobody never says nothin’ 
’bout it. Oh, God has made IJgly Things wi’ death in their 
mouths, Miss Darlin’, an’ He knows what they’re for ; but my 

poor Elsie! — to have her blood changed in her before It 

was in July Mistress got her death, but she liv’ till three 
weeks after my poor Elsie was born.” 

She could speak no more. She had said enough. Helen 
remembered the stories she had heard on coming to the vil- 


THE SECRET IS WHISPERED. 319 

lage, and among them one referred to in an early chapter of 
this narrative. All the unaccountable looks and tastes and 
ways of Elsie came back to her in the light of an ante-natal 
impression which had mingled an alien element in her nature. 
She knew the secret of the fascination which looked out of her 
cold, glittering eyes. She knew the significance of the strange 
repulsion which she felt in her own intimate consciousness 
underlying the inexplicable attraction which drew her towards 
the young girl in spite of this repugnance. She began to 
look with new feelings on the contradictions in her moral 
nature, — the longing for sympathy, as shown by her wishing 
for Helen’s company, and the impossibility of passing beyond 
the cold circle of isolation within which she had her being. 
The fearful truth of that instinctive feeling of hers, that 
there was something not human looking out of Elsie’s eyes, 
came upon her with a sudden flash of penetrating conviction. 
There were two warring principles in that superb organiza- 
tion and proud soul. One made her a woman, with all a 
woman’s powers and longings. The other chilled all the 
currents of outlet for her emotions. It made her tearless and 
mute, when another woman would have wept and pleaded. 
And it infused into her soul something — it was cruel now to 
call it malice — which was still and watchful and dangerous, — 
which waited its opportunity, and then shot like an arrow 
from its bow out of the coil of brooding premeditation. Even 
those who had never seen the white scars on Dick Yenner’s 
wrist, or heard the half-told story of her supposed attempt to 
do a graver mischief, knew well enough by looking at her 
that she was one of the creatures not to be tampered with, — 
silent in anger and swift in vengeance. 

Helen could not return to the bedside at once after this 
communication. It was with altered eyes that she must look 
on the poor girl, the victim of such an unheard-of fatality. 
All was explained to her now. But it opened such depths of 
solemn thought in her awakened consciousness, that it seemed 
as if the whole mystery of human life were coming up again 
before her for trial and judgment. “ Oh,” she thought, “ if, 
while the will lies sealed in its fountain, it may be poisoned at 
Its very source, so that it shall flow dark and deadly through its 
whole course, who are we that we should judge our fellow- 
creatures by ourselves ? ” Then came the terrible question, 
Bow far the elements themselves are capable of perverting the 


320 


ELSIE VENNER. 


moral nature: if valor, and justice, and truth, the strength, 
of man and the virtue of woman, may not be poisoned out of 
a race by the food of the Australian in his forest, — by the 
foul air and darkness of the Christians cooped up in the 
“ tenement-houses ” close by those who live in the palaces of 
the great cities ? 

She walked out into the garden, lost in thought upon these 
dark and deep matters. Presently she heard a step behind 
her, and Elsie’s father came up and joined her. Since his 
introduction to Helen at the distinguished tea-party given 
by the Widow Bowens, and before her coming to sit with 
Elsie, Mr. Dudley Yenner had in the most accidental way in 
the world met her on several occasions: once after church, 
when she happened to be caught in a slight shower and he 
insisted on holding his umbrella over her on her way home ; — 
once at a small party at one of the mansion-houses, where the 
quick-eyed lady of the house had a wonderful knack of bring- 
ing people together who liked to see each other; — perhaps 
at other times and places; but of this there is no certain 
evidence. 

They naturally spoke of Elsie, her illness, and the aspect 
it had taken. But Helen noticed in all that Dudley Yenner 
said about his daughter a morbid sensitiveness, as it seemed 
to her, an aversion to saying much about her physical con- 
dition or her peculiarities, — a wish to feel and speak as a 
parent should, and yet a shrinking, as if there were something 
about Elsie which he could not bear to dwell upon. She 
thought she saw through all this, and she could interpret it 
all charitably. There were circumstances about his daughter 
which recalled the great sorrow of his life ; it was not strange 
that this perpetual reminder should in some degree have 
modified his feelings as a father. But what a life he must 
have been leading for so many years, with this perpetual 
source of distress which he could not name ! Helen knew well 
enough, now, the meaning of the sadness which had left such 
traces in his features and tones, and it made her feel very 
kindly and compassionate toward him. 

So they walked over the crackling leaves in the garden,, 
between the lines of box breathing its fragrance of eternity ; — 
for this is one of the odors which carry us out of time into 
the abysses of the unbeginning past; if we ever lived on 
another ball of stone than this, it must be that there was box 


THE SECRET IS WHISPERED. 321 

growing on it. So they walked, finding their way softly to 
each other’s sorrows and sympathies, each matching some 
counterpart to the other’s experience of life, and startled to 
see how the different, yet parallel, lessons they had been 
taught by suffering had led them step by step to the same 
serene acquiescence in the orderings of that Supreme Wis- 
dom which they both devoutly recognized. 

Old Sophy was at the window and saw them walking up 
and down the garden-alleys. She watched them as her 
grandfather the savage watched the figures that moved among 
the trees when a hostile tribe was lurking about his mountain. 

“ There’ll be a weddin’ in the ol’ house,” she said, “ before 
there’s roses on them bushes, ag’in. But it won’ be my poor 
Elsie’s weddin’, ’n’ 01’ Sophy won’ be there.” 

When Helen prayed in the silence of her soul that evening, 
it was not that Elsie’s life might be spared. She dared not 
ask that as a favor of Heaven. What could life be to her but 
a perpetual anguish, and to those about her an ever-present 
terror ? Might she but be so influenced by divine grace, that 
what in her was most truly human, most purely woman-like, 
should overcome the dark, cold, unmentionable instinct which 
had pervaded her being like a subtile poison: that was all 
she could ask, and the rest she left to a higher wisdom and 
tenderer love than her own. 




" ' / ■ 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


THE WHITE ASH. 

When Helen returned to Elsie’s bedside, it was with a new 
and still deeper feeling of sympathy, such as the story told 
by Old Sophy might well awaken. She understood, as never 
before, the singular fascination and as singular repulsion 
which she had long felt in Elsie’s presence. It had not been 
without a great effort that she had forced herself to become 
the almost constant attendant of the sick girl; and now she 
was learning, but not for the first time, the blessed truth 
which so many good women have found out for themselves, 
that the hardest duty bravely performed soon becomes a 
habit, and tends in due time to transform itself into a 
pleasure. 

The old Doctor was beginning to look graver, in spite of 
himself. The fever, if such it was, went gently forward, 
wasting the young girl’s powers of resistance from day to 
day ; yet she showed no disposition to take nourishment, and 
seemed literally to be living on air. It was remarkable that 
with all this her look was almost natural, and her features 
were hardly sharpened so as to suggest that her life was burn- 
ing away. He did not like this, nor various other unobtru- 
sive signs of danger which his practiced eye detected. A 
very small matter might turn the balance which held life and 
death poised against each other. He surrounded her with 
precautions, that Nature might have every opportunity of 
cunningly shifting the weights from the scale of death to the 
scale of life, as she will often do, if not rudely disturbed or 
interfered with. 

Little tokens of good-will and kind remembrance were con- 
stantly coming to her from the girls in the school and the 
good people in the village. Some of the mansion-house peo- 
ple obtained rare flowers which they sent her, and her table 
was covered with fruits which tempted her in vain. Several 
of the schoolgirls wished to make her a basket of their own 
handiwork, and, filling it with autumnal flowers, to send it 

322 


THE WHITE ASH. 


323 


as a joint offering. Mr. Bernard found out their project 
accidentally, and, wishing to have his share in it brought 
home from one of his long walks some boughs full of vari- 
ously tinted leaves, such as were still clinging to the stricken 
trees. With these he brought also some of the already fallen 
leaflets of the white ash, remarkable for their rich olive- 
purple color, forming a beautiful contrast with some of the 
lighter-hued leaves. It so happened that this particular tree, 
the white ash, did not grow upon The Mountain, and the 
leaflets were more welcome for their comparative rarity. So 
the girls made their basket, and the floor of it they covered 
with the rich olive-purple leaflets. Such late flowers as they 
could lay their hands upon served to fill it, and with many 
kindly messages they sent it to Miss Elsie Venner at the 
Dudley mansion-house. 

Elsie was sitting up in her bed when it came, languid, but 
tranquil, and Helen was by her, as usual, holding her hand, 
which was strangely cold, Helen thought, for one who was 
said to have some kind of fever. The schoolgirls’ basket 
was brought in with its messages of love and hopes for speedy 
recovery. Old Sophy was delighted to see that it pleased 
Elsie, and laid it on the bed before her. Elsie began looking 
at the flowers and taking them from the basket, that she 
might see the leaves. All at once she appeared to be agi- 
tated ; she looked at the basket, — then around, as if there was 
some fearful presence about her which she was searching 
for with her eager glances. She took out the flowers, one by 
one, her breath growing hurried, her eyes staring, her hands 
trembling, till, as she came near the bottom of the basket, 
she flung out all the rest with a hasty movement, looked 
upon the olive-purple leaflets as if paralyzed for a moment, 
shrunk up, as it were, into herself in a curdling terror, 
dashed the basket from her, and fell back senseless, with a 
faint cry which chilled the blood of the startled listeners at 
lier bedside. 

“ Take it away ! — take it away ! — quick ! ” said Old Sophy, 
as she hastened to her mistress’s pillow. “It’s the leaves of 
the tree that was always death to her, — take it away! She 
can’t live wi’ it in the room ! ” 

The poor old woman began chafing Elsie’s hands, and 
Helen tried to rouse her with hartshorn, while a third fright- 
ened attendant gathered up the flowers and the basket and 


624 


ELSIE VENNER. 


carried them out of th# apartment. She came to herself 
after a time, but exhausted and then wandering. In her 
delirium she talked constantly as if she were in a cave, with 
such exactness of circumstance that Helen could not doubt at 
all that she had some such retreat among the rocks of The 
Mountain, probably fitted up in her own fantastic way, where 
she sometimes hid herself from all human eyes, and of the 
entrance to which she alone possessed the secret. 

All this passed away, and left her, of course, weaker than 
before. But this was not the only influence the unexplained 
paroxysm had left behind it. From this time forward there 
was a change in her whole expression and her manner. The 
shadows ceased flitting over her features, and the old woman* 
who watched her from day to day and from hour to hour as a 
mother watches her child, saw the likeness she bore to her 
mother coming forth more and more, as the cold glitter died 
out of the diamond eyes, and the stormy scowl disappeared 
from the dark brows and low forehead. 

With all the kindness and indulgence her father had be- 
stowed upon her, Elsie had never felt that he loved her. The 
reader knows well enough what fatal recollections and associ- 
ations had frozen up the springs of natural affection in his- 
breast. There was nothing in the world he would not do for 
Elsie. He had sacrificed his whole life to her. His very 
seeming carelessness about restraining her was all calculated 
he knew that restraint would produce nothing but utter 
alienation. Just so far as she allowed him, he shared her 
studies, her few pleasures, her thoughts; but she was essen- 
tially solitary and uncommunicative. Ho person, as was said 
long ago, could judge him, — because his task was not merely 
difficult, but simply impracticable to human powers. A 
nature like Elsie’s had necessarily to be studied by itself, and 
to be followed in its laws where it could not be led. 

Every day, at different hours, during the whole of his 
daughter’s illness, Dudley Yenner had sat by her, doing all 
he could to soothe and please her. Always the same thin fil m 
of some emotional non-conductor between them ; always that 
kind of habitual regard and family-interest, mingled with 
the deepest pity on one side and a sort of respect on the other* 
which never warmed into outward evidences of affection. 

It was after this occasion, when she had been so profoundly 
agitated by a seemingly insignificant cause, that her father 


THE WHITE ASH. 


325 


and Old Sophy were sitting, one at one side of her bed and 
one at the other. She had fallen into a light slumber. As 
they were looking at her, the same thought came into both 
their minds at the same moment. Old Sophy spoke for 
both, as she said, in a low voice, — 

“ It’s her mother’s look, — it’s her mother’s own face right 
over again, — she never look’ so before, — the Lord’s hand is 
on her ! His will be done ! ” 

When Elsie woke and lifted her languid eyes upon her 
father’s face, she saw in it a tenderness, a depth of affection, 
such as she remembered at rare moments of her childhood, 
when she had won him to her by some unusual gleam of 
sunshine in her fitful temper. 

“ Elsie, dear,” he said, “ we were thinking how much your 
expression was sometimes like that of your sweet mother. 
If you could but have seen her, so as to remember her ! ” 

The tender look and tone, the yearning of the daughter’s 
heart for the mother she had never seen, save only with the 
unfixed, undistinguishing eyes of earliest infancy, perhaps 
the underthought that she might soon rejoin her in another 
state of being, — all came upon 'her with a sudden overflow of 
feeling which broke through all the barriers between her 
heart and her eyes, and Elsie wept. It seemed to her father 
as if the malign influence — evil spirit it might almost be 
called — which had pervaded her being, had at last been 
driven forth or exorcised, and that these tears were at once 
the sign and the pledge of her redeemed nature. But now 
she was to be soothed and not excited. After her tears she 
slept again, and the look her face wore was peaceful as never 
before. 

Old Sophy met the Doctor at the door and told him all the 
circumstances connected with the extraordinary attack from 
which Elsie had suffered. It was the purple leaves, she said. 
She remembered that Dick once brought home a branch of a 
tree with some of the same leaves on it, and Elsie screamed 
and almost fainted then. She, Sophy, had asked her, after 
she had got quiet, what was in the leaves that made her feel 
so bad. Elsie couldn’t tell her, — didn’t like to speak about 
it, — shuddered whenever Sophy mentioned it. 

This did not sound so strangely to the old Doctor as it 
does to some who listen to this narrative. He had known, 
some curious examples of antipathies, and remembered read- 


326 


ELSIE VENDER. 


ing of others still more singular. He had known those wha 
could not bear the presence of a cat, and recollected the story,, 
often told, of a person’s hiding one in a chest when one of 
these sensitive individuals came into the room, so as not to 
disturb him ; but he presently began to sweat and turn pale,, 
and cried out that there must be a cat hidden somewhere. 
He knew people who were poisoned by strawberries, by honey, 
by different meats, — many who could not endure cheese, — 
some who could not bear the smell of roses. If he had 
known all the stories in the old books, he would have found 
that some have swooned and become as dead men at the smell 
of a rose, — that a stout soldier has been known to turn and 
run at the sight or smell of rue, — that cassia and even olive- 
oil have produced deadly faintings in certain individuals, — 
in short, that almost everything has seemed to be a poison to- 
somebody. 

“ Bring me that basket, Sophy,” said the old Doctor, “ if 
you can find it.” 

Sophy brought it to him, — for he had not yet entered 
Elsie’s apartment. 

“ These purple leaves are from the white ash,” he said^ 
“You don’t know the notion that people commonly have 
about that tree, Sophy ? ” 

“I know they say the Ugly Things never go where the 
white ash grows,” Sophy answered. “ Oh, Doctor dear, what 
I’m thinkin’ of a’n’t true, is it ? ” 

The Doctor smiled sadly, but did not answer. He went 
directly to Elsie’s room. Nobody would have known by his 
manner that he saw any special change in his patient. He 
spoke with her as usual, made some slight alteration in his 
prescriptions, and left the room with a kind, cheerful look. 
He met her father on the stairs. 

“Is it as I thought?” said Dudley Venner. 

“ There is everything to fear,” the Doctor said ; “ and not 
much, I am afraid, to hope. Does not her face recall to you 
one that you remember, as never before? ” 

“ Yes,” her father answered, — “ oh, yes ! What is the 
meaning of this change which has come over her features, 
and her voice, her temper, her whole being? Tell me, 
oh, tell me, what is it? Can it be that the curse is passing 
away, and my daughter is to be restored to me, — such as he/ 
mother would have had her, — such as her mother was ? ” 


THE WHITE ASH. 


327 

“Walk out with me into the garden,” the Doctor said,. 
“ and I will tell you all I know and all I think about this 
great mystery of Elsie’s life.” 

They walked out together, and the Doctor began : — 

“ She has lived a double being, as it were, — the conse- 
quence of the blight which fell upon her in the dim period 
before -consciousness. You can see what she might have 
been but for this. You know that for these eighteen years- 
her whole existence has taken its character from that influ- 
ence which we need not name. But you will remember that 
few of the lower forms of life last as human beings do ; and 
thus it might have been hoped and trusted with some show r 
of reason, as I have always suspected you hoped and trusted* 
perhaps more confidently than myself, that the lower nature 
which had become ingrafted on the higher would die out and 
leave the real woman’s life she inherited to outlive this ac- 
cidental principle which had so poisoned her childhood and 
youth. I believe it is so dying out ; but I am afraid, — yes, I 
must say it, I fear it has involved the centers of life in 
its own decay. There is hardly any pulse at Elsie’s wrist; 
no stimulants seem to rouse her; and it looks as if life were 
slowly retreating inwards, so that by-and-by she will sleep 
as those who lie down in the cold and never wake.” 

Strange as it may seem, her father heard all this not with- 
out deep sorrow, and such marks of it as his thoughtful and 
tranquil nature, long schooled by suffering, claimed or per- 
mitted, but with a resignation itself the measure of his past; 
trials. Dear as his daughter might become to him, all he 
dared to ask of Heaven was that she might be restored to 
that truer self which lay beneath her false and adventitious- 
being. If he could once see that the icy luster in her eyes- 
had become a soft, calm light, — that her soul was at peace 
with all about her and with Him above, — this crumb from 
the children’s table was enough for him, as it was for the 
Syro-Phoenician woman who asked that the dark spirit might 
go out from her daughter. 

There was little change the next day, until all at once she' 
said in a clear voice that she should like to see her master at 
the school, Mr. Langdon. He came accordingly, and took 
the place of Helen at her bedside. It seemed as if Elsie had 
forgotten the last scene with him. Might it be that pride 
had come in, and she had sent for him only to show how> 


328 


ELSIE VENNER. 


superior she had grown to the weakness which had betrayed 
her into that extraordinary request, so contrary to the in- 
stincts and usages of her sex? Or was it that the singular 
change which had come over her had involved her passionate 
fancy for him and swept it away with her other habits of 
thought and feeling? Or could it be that she felt that all 
earthly interests were becoming of little account to her, and 
wished to place herself right with one to whom she had dis- 
played a wayward movement of her unbalanced imagination ? 
She welcomed Mr. Bernard as quietly as she had received 
Helen Darley. He colored at the recollection of that last 
scene, when he came into her presence; but she smiled with 
perfect tranquillity. She did not speak to him of any appre- 
hension ; but he saw that she looked upon herself as doomed. 
So friendly, yet so calm did she seem through all their in- 
terview, that Mr. Bernard could only look back upon her 
manifestation of feeling towards him on their walk from the 
school as a vagary of a mind laboring under some unnatural 
excitement, and wholly at variance with the true character 
of Elsie Yenner as he saw her before him in her subdued, 
yet singular beauty. He looked with almost scientific close- 
ness of observation into the diamond eyes ; but that peculiar 
light which he knew so well was not there. She was the 
same in one sense as on that first day when he had seen her 
coiling and uncoiling her golden chain ; yet how different in 
«very aspect which revealed her state of mind and emotion ! 
Something of tenderness there was, perhaps, in her tone to- 
wards him; she would not have sent for him, had she not 
felt more than an ordinary interest in him. But through the 
whole of his visit she never lost her gracious self-possession. 
The Dudley race might well be proud of the last of its daugh- 
ters, as she lay dying, but unconquered by the feeling of the 
present or the fear of the future. 

As for Mr. Bernard, he found it very hard to look upon 
her, and listen to her unmoved. There was nothing that 
reminded him of the stormy-browed, almost savage girl he re- 
membered in her fierce loveliness, — nothing of all her singu- 
larities of air and of costume. Nothing? Yes, one thing. 
Weak and suffering as she was, she had never parted with 
one particular ornament, such as a sick person would natu- 
rally, as it might be supposed, get rid of at once. The golden 
.cord which she wore round her neck at the great party was 


THE WHITE ASH. 329 

still there. A bracelet was lying by her pillow; she had un- 
clasped it from her wrist. 

Before Mr. Bernard left her, she said, — 

“ I shall never see you again. Some time or other, per- 
haps, you will mention my name to one whom you love.. 
Give her this from your scholar and friend Elsie.” 

He took the bracelet, raised her hand to his lips, then 
turned his face away ; in that moment he was the weaker of 
the two. 

“ Good-by,” she said ; “ thank you for coming.” 

His voice died away in his throat, as he tried to answer 
her. She followed him with her eyes as he passed from her 
sight through the door, and when it closed after him sobbed 
tremulously once or twice, — but stilled herself, and met 
Helen, as she entered, with a composed countenance. 

“ I have had a very pleasant visit from Mr. Langdon,”* 
Elsie said. “ Sit by me, Helen, awhile without speaking; I 
should like to sleep, if I can, — and to dream.” 


CHAPTER XXX. 


THE GOLDEN CORD IS LOOSED. 

The Reverend Chauncy Eairweather, hearing that his 
^parishioner’s daughter, Elsie, was very ill, could do nothing 
less than come to the mansion-house and tender such con- 
solations as he was master of. It was rather remarkable 
that the old Doctor did not exactly approve of his visit. 
He thought that company of every sort might be injurious in 
Rer weak state. He was of the opinion that Mr. Fair- 
weather, though greatly interested in religious matters, was 
not the most sympathetic person that could be found; in 
fact, the old Doctor thought he was too much taken up with 
Ris own interests for eternity to give himself quite so 
heartily to the need of other people as some persons got up 
on a rather more generous scale (our good neighbor Dr. 
Honeywood, for instance) could do. However, all these 
things had better be arranged to suit her wants; if she 
would like to talk with a clergyman, she had a great deal 
better see one as often as she liked, and run the risk of the 
-excitement, than have a hidden wish for such a visit and per- 
Raps find herself too weak to see him by-and-by. 

The old Doctor knew by sad experience that dreadful mis- 
take against which all medical practitioners should be 
warned. His experience may well be a guide for others. 
Do not overlook the desire for spiritual advice and consola- 
tion which patients sometimes feel, and, with the frightful 
mauvaise honte peculiar to Protestantism, alone among all 
human beliefs, are ashamed to tell. As a part of medical 
treatment, it is the physician’s business to detect the hidden 
longing for the food of the soul, as much as for any form 
of bodily nourishment. Especially in the higher walks 
of society, where this unutterably miserable false shame of 
Protestantism acts in proportion to the general acuteness of 
the cultivated sensibilities, let no unwillingness to suggest 
the sick person’s real need suffer him to languish between. 
Ris want and his morbid sensitiveness. What an infinite ad- 


330 


THE GOLDEN CORD IS LOOSED. 


331 


vantage the Mussulmans and the Catholics have over many 7 
of our more exclusively spiritual sects in the way they keep* 
their religion always by them and never blush for it! And 
besides this spiritual longing, we should never forget that. 

“ On some fond heart the parting soul relies,” 

and the minister of religion, in addition to the sympathetic, 
nature which we have a right to demand in him, has trained 
himself to the art of entering into the feelings of others. 

The reader must pardon this digression, which introduces, 
the visit of the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather to Elsie Ven- 
ner. It was mentioned to her that he would like to call and 
see how she was, and she consented, — not with much appar- 
ent interest, for she had reasons of her own for not feeling 
any very deep conviction of his sympathy for persons in 
sorrow. But he came, and worked the conversation round 
to religion, and confused her with his hybrid notions, half 
made up of what he had been believing and teaching all his 
life, and half of the new doctrines which he had veneered 
upon the surface of his old belief. He got so far as to make 
a prayer with her, — a cool, well-guarded prayer, which com- 
promised his faith as little as possible, and which, if demotion 
were a game played against Providence, might have been 
considered a cautious and sagacious move. 

When he had gone, Elsie called Old Sophy to her. 

“ Sophy,” she said, “ don’t let them send that cold-hearted 
man to me any more. If your old minister comes to see 
you, I should like to hear him talk. He looks as if he cared 
for everybody, and would care for me. And, Sophy, if I 
should die one of these days, I should like to have that old 
minister come and say whatever is to be said over me. It 
would comfort Dudley more, I know, than to have that hard 
man here, when you're in trouble, — for some of you will b& 
sorry when I’m gone, won’t you, Sophy ? ” 

The poor old black woman could not stand this question. 
The cold minister had frozen Elsie until she felt as if nobody 
cared for her or would regret her, — and her question had be- 
trayed this momentary feeling. 

“ Don’ talk so ! don’ talk so, darlin’ ! ” she cried, passion- 
ately. “ When you go, 01’ Sophy’ll go ; ’n’ where you go, OF 
Sophy’ll go : ’n’ we’ll both go t’ th’ place where th’ Lord takes. 


332 


ELSIE VENNER. 


care of all his children, whether their faces are white or 
black. Oh, darlin’, darlin’ ! if th’ Lord should let me die fus’, 
,you shall fin’ all ready for you when you come after me. 
O’ny don’ go ’n’ leave poor 01’ Sophy all ’lone in th’ world ! ” 

Helen came in at this moment and quieted the old woman 
with a look. Such scenes were just what were most danger- 
ous, in the state in which Elsie was lying : but that is one of 
the ways in which an affectionate friend sometimes uncon- 
sciously wears out the life which a hired nurse, thinking of 
nothing but her regular duties and wages, would have spared 
from all emotional fatigue. 

The change which had come over Elsie’s disposition was 
itself the cause of new excitements. How was it possible that 
her father could keep away from her, now that she was com- 
ing back to the nature and the very look of her mother, the 
bride of his youth ? How was it possible to refuse her, when 
she said to Old Sophy, that she should like to have her min- 
ister come in and sit by her, even though his presence might 
perhaps prove a new source of excitement? 

But the Reverend Doctor did come and sit by her, and 
spoke such soothing words to her, words of such peace and 
^consolation, that from that hour she was tranquil as never 
before^ All true hearts are alike in the hour of need; the 
Catholic has a reserve fund of faith for his fellow-creature’s 
trying moment, and the Calvinist reveals those springs of 
human brotherhood and charity in his soul which are only 
covered over by the iron tables inscribed with the harder 
dogmas of his creed. It was enough that the Reverend Doc- 
tor knew all of Elsie’s history. He could not judge her by 
any formula, like those which have been molded by past 
ages out of their ignorance. He did not talk with her as if 
she were an outside sinner, worse than himself. He found a 
bruised and languishing soul, and bound up its wounds. A 
blessed office, — one which is confined to no sect or creed, but 
which good men in all times, under various names and with 
varying ministries, to suit the need of each age, of each race, 
of each individual soul, have come forward to discharge for 
their suffering fellow-creatures. 

After this there was little change in Elsie, except that her 
heart beat more feebly every day, — so that the old Doctor 
himself, with all his experience, could see nothing to account 
for the gradual, failing of the powers of life, and yet could 


THE GOLDEN CORD IS LOOSED. 33 $ 

find no remedy which seemed to arrest its progress in the 
smallest degree. 

“Be very careful,” he said, “that she is not allowed to 
make any muscular exertion. Any such effort, when a person 
is so enfeebled, may stop the heart in a moment; and if it 
stops, it will never move again.” 

Helen enforced this rule with the greatest care. Elsie’ 
was hardly allowed to move her hand or to speak above a 
whisper. It seemed to be mainly the question now, whether 
this trembling flame of life would be blown out by some 
light breath of air, or whether it could be so nursed and shel- 
tered by the hollow of these watchful hands that it would 
have a chance to kindle to its natural brightness. 

Her father came to sit with her in the evening. He 

had never talked so freely with her as during the hour he 
had passed at her bedside, telling her little circumstances of 
her mother’s life, living over with her all that was pleasant 
in the past, and trying to encourage her with some cheerful 
gleams of hope for the future. A faint smile played over 
her face, but she did not answer his encouraging suggestions,. 
The hour came for him to leave her with those who watched 
by her. 

“ Good-night, my dear child,” he said, and stooping down,, 
kised her cheek. 

Elsie rose by a sudden effort, threw her arms round his- 
neck, kissed him, and said, “ Good-night, my dear- 
father ! ” 

The suddenness of her movement had taken him by sur- 
prise, or he would have checked so dangerous an effort. It 
was too late now. Her arms slid away from him like lifeless- 
weights, — her head fell back upon her pillow, — a long sigh 
breathed through her lips. 

“ She is faint,” said Helen, doubtfully ; “ bring me the 
hartshorn, Sophy.” 

The old woman had started from her place, and was now 
leaning over her, looking in her face, and listening for the 
sound of her breathing. 

“ She’s dead ! Elsie’s dead ! My darlin’ ’s dead ! ” she 
cried aloud, filling the room with her utterance of anguish. 

Dudley Venner drew her away and silenced her with a 
voice of authority, while Helen and an assistant plied their 
restoratives. It was all in vain. 


334 


ELSIE YENNER. 


The solemn tidings passed from the chamber of death 
through the family. The daughter, the hope of that old and 
honored house, was dead in the freshness of her youth, and 
the home of its solitary representative was hereafter doubly 
•desolate. 

A messenger rode hastily out of the avenue. A little 
:after this the people of the village and the outlying farm- 
houses were startled by the sound of a bell. 

One, — two, — three, — four, — 

They stopped in every house, as far as the wavering vibra- 
tions reached, and listened 

five, — six, — seven, — 

It was not the little child which had been lying so long 
tat the point of death; that could not be more than three or 
four years old — 

eight, — nine, — ten, — and so on to fifteen, — sixteen, — 

^seventeen, — eighteen- 

The pulsations seemed to keep on, — but it was the brain, 
^nd not the bell, that was throbbing now. 

“ Elsie’s dead ! ” was the exclamation at a hundred fire- 
sides. 

“ Eighteen year old,” said old Widow Peake, rising from 
"her chair. “ Eighteen year ago I laid two gold eagles on her 
mother’s eyes, — he wouldn’t have anything but gold touch 
her eyelids, — and now Elsie’s to be straightened, — the Lord 
have mercy on her poor sinful soul ! ” 

Dudley Venner prayed that night that he might be for- 
given, if he had failed in any act of duty or kindness to this 
nnfortunate child of his, now freed from all the woes born 
with her and so long poisoning her soul. He thanked God 
for the brief interval of peace which had been granted her, 
for the sweet communion they had enjoyed in these last days, 
and for the hope of meeting her with that other lost friend 
in a better world. 

Helen mingled a ffew broken thanks and petitions with her 
tears; thanks that she had been permitted to share the last 
•days and hours of this poor sister in sorrow; petitions that 
the grief of bereavement might be lightened to the lonely 
parent and the faithful old servant. 

Old Sophy said almost nothing, but sat day and night by 
her dead darling. But sometimes her anguish would find an 
outlet in strange sounds, something between a cry and a 


THE GOLDEN CORD IS LOOSED. 


335 


musical note, — such as none had ever heard her utter before. 
There were old remembrances surging up from her childish 
days, — coming through her mother from the cannibal chief, 
her grandfather, — death-wails, such as they sing in the 
mountains of Western Africa, when they see the fires on 
distant hill-sides and know that their own wives and children 
are undergoing the fate of captives. 

The time came when Elsie was to be laid by her mother 
in the small square marked by the white stone. 

It was not unwillingly that the Reverend Chauncy Fair- 
weather had relinquished the duty of conducting the ser- 
vice to the Reverend Doctor Honeywood, in accordance with 
Elsie’s request. He could not, by any reasoning, reconcile 
his present way of thinking with a hope for the future of 
his unfortunate parishioner. Any good old Roman Catholic 
priest, born and bred to his faith and his business, would have 
found a loophole into some kind of heaven for her, by vir- 
tue of his doctrine of “ invincible ignorance,” or other special 
proviso; but a recent convert cannot enter into the working 
conditions of his new creed. Beliefs must be lived in for a 
..good while, before they accommodate themselves to the soul’s 
wants, and wear loose enough to be comfortable. 

The Reverend Doctor had no such scruples. Like thou- 
sands of those who are classed nominally with the despairing 
believers, he had never prayed over a departed brother or 
sister without feeling and expressing a guarded hope that 
there was mercy in store for the poor sinner, whom parents, 
wives, children, brothers, and sisters could not bear to give up 
to utter ruin without a word, — and would not, as he knew 
full well, in virtue of that human love and sympathy which 
nothing can ever extinguish. And in this poor Elsie’s his- 
tory he could read nothing which the tears of the recording 
angel might not wash away. As the good physician of the 
place knew the diseases that assailed the bodies of men and 
women, so he had learned the mysteries of the sickness of 
the soul. 

So many wished to look upon Elsie’s face once more, that 
her father would not deny them; nay, he was pleased that 
those who remembered her living should see her in the still 
'beauty of death. Helen and those with her arrayed her for 
fhis farewell-view. All was ready for the sad or curious 
ueyes which were to look upon her. There was no painful 


336 


ELSIE VENNER. 


change to be concealed by any artifice. Even her round neck 
was left uncovered, that she might be more like one who 
slept. Only the golden cord was left in its place: some 
searching eye might detect a trace of that birthmark which 
it was whispered she had always worn a necklace to conceal. 

At the last moment, when all the preparations were com- 
pleted, Old Sophy stooped over her, and, with trembling 
hand, loosed the golden cord. She looked intently, for some 
little space: there was no shade nor blemish where the ring 
of gold had encircled her throat. She took it gently away 
and laid it in the casket which held her ornaments. 

“ The Lord be praised ! ” the old woman cried, aloud. 
“He has taken away the mark that was on her; she’s fit to 
meet his holy angels now ! ” 

So Elsie lay for hours in the great room, in a kind of state,, 
with flowers all about her, — her black hair braided as in life,. 
— her brows smooth, as if they had never known the scowl 
of passion, — and on her lips the faint smile with which she 
had uttered her last “ Good-night.” The young girls from 
the school looked at her, one after another, and passed on, 
sobbing, carrying in their hearts the picture that would be 
with them all their days. The great people of the place were 
all there with their silent sympathy. The lesser kind of 
gentry, and many of the plainer folk of the village, half- 
pleased to find themselves passing beneath the stately portico 
of the ancient mansion-house, crowded in # until the ample 
rooms were overflowing. All the friends whose acquaintance 
we have made were there, and many from remoter villages 
and towns. 

There was a deep silence at last. The hour had come for 
the parting words to be spoken over the dead. The good old 
minister’s voice rose out of the stillness, subdued and tremu- 
lous at first, but growing firmer and clearer as he went on, 
until it reached the ears of the visitors who were in the far, 
desolate chambers, looking at the pictured hangings and 
the old dusty portraits. He did not tell her story in his 
prayer. He only spoke of our dear departed sister as one of 
many whom Providence in its wisdom has seen fit to bring 
under bondage from their cradles. It was not for us to 
judge them by any standard of our own. He who made the 
heart alone knew the infirmities it inherited or acquired* 
For all that our dear sister had presented that was interest- 


THE GOLDEN CORD IS LOOSED. 337 

ing and attractive in her character we were to be grateful; 
for whatever was dark or inexplicable we must trust that the 
deep shadow which rested on the twilight dawn of her being 
might render a reason before the bar of Omniscience ; for the 
grace which had lightened her last days we should pour out 
our hearts in thankful acknowledgment. From the life and 
the death of this our dear sister we should learn a lesson of 
patience with our fellow-creatures in their inborn peculiari- 
ties, of charity in judging what seem to us willful faults of 
character, of hope and trust, that by sickness or affliction, or 
such inevitable discipline as life must always bring with it, 
if by no gentler means, the soul which had been left by 
Nature to wander into the path of error and of suffering 
might be reclaimed and restored to its true aim, and so led 
on by divine grace to its eternal welfare. He closed his 
prayer by commending each member of the afflicted family 
to the divine blessing. 

Then all at once rose the clear sound of the girls’ voices, 
in the sweet, sad melody of a funeral hymn, — one of those 
which Elsie had marked, as if prophetically, among her own 
favorites. 

And so they laid her in the earth, and showered down 
flowers upon her, and filled her grave, and covered it with 
green sods. By the side of it was another oblong ridge, with 
a white stone standing at its head. Mr. Bernard looked 
upon it, as he came close to the place where Elsie was laid, 
and read the insrciption, — 

CATALINA 

WIFE TO DUDLEY VENNER 

DIED 

October 13, 1840 

AGED TWENTY YEARS. 

A gentle rain fell on the turf after it was laid. This was 
the beginning of a long and dreary autumnal storm, a de- 
ferred “ equinoctial,” as many considered it. The mountain 
streams were all swollen and turbulent, and the steep declivi- 
ties were furrowed in every direction by new channels. It 
made the house seem doubly desolate to hear the wind howl- 
ing and the rain beating upon the roofs. The poor relation 
who was staying at the house would insist on Helen’s re- 


338 


ELSIE VENNER. 


maining a few days : Old Sophy was in such a condition, that 
it kept her in continual anxiety, and there were many cares, 
which Helen could take off from her. 

The old black woman’s life was buried in her darling’s 
grave. She did nothing but moan, and lament for her. At 
night she was restless, and would get up and wander to 
Elsie’s apartment and look for her and call her by name. At 
other times she would lie awake and listen to the wind and 
the rain, — sometimes with such a wild look upon her face, 
and with such sudden starts and exclamations, that it seemed 
as if she heard spirit-voices and were answering the whispers 
of unseen visitants. With all this were mingled hints of her 
old superstition, — forebodings of something fearful about to 
happen, — perhaps the great final catastrophe of all things, 
according to the prediction current in the kitchens of Rock- 
land. 

“ Hark ! ” Old Sophy would say, — “ don’ you hear th’ 
crackin’ ’n’ th’ snappin’ up in Th’ Mountain, ’n’ rollin’ o-’ th’ 
big stones? The’ ’s somethin’ stirrin’ among th’ rocks; I 
hear th’ soun’ of it in th’ night, when th’ wind has stopped 
blowin’. Oh, stay by me a little while, Miss Darlin’ ! stay 
by me ! for it’s th’ Las’ Day, maybe, that’s close on us, ’n’ I 
feel as if I couldn’ meet th’ Lord all alone ! ” 

It was curious, — but Helen did certainly recognize sounds, 
during the lull of the storm, which were not of falling rain 
or running streams, — short snapping sounds, as of tense 
cords breaking, — long uneven sounds, as of masses rolling 
down steep declivities. But the morning came as usual ; and 
as the others said nothing of these singular noises, Helen 
did not think it necessary to speak of them. All day long 
she and the humble relative of Elsie’s mother, who had ap- 
peared as poor relations are wont to in the great crises of 
life, were busy in arranging the disordered house, and look- 
ing over the various objects which Elsie’s singular tastes had 
brought together, to dispose of them as her father might 
direct. They all met together at the usual hour for tea. 
One of the servants came in, looking very blank, and said to 
the poor relation, — 

“ The well is gone dry ; we have nothing but rain- 
water.” 

Dudley Venner’s countenance changed; he sprang to his 
feet and went to assure himself of the fact, and, if he could,. 


THE GOLDEN CORD IS LOOSED. 339 

of the reason of it. For a well to dry up during such a rain- 
storm was extraordinary, — it was ominous. 

He came back, looking very anxious. 

“ Did any of you notice any remarkable sounds last night,” 
lie said, — “ or this morning ? Hark ! do you hear anything 
now ? ” 

They listened in perfect silence for a few moments. Then 
There came a short crackling sound, and two or three snaps, 
-as of parting cords. 

Dudley Yenner called all his household together. 

“We are in danger here, as I think, to-night,” he said, — 
u< not very great danger, perhaps, but it is a risk I do not 
wish you to run. These heavy rains have loosed some of 
the rocks above, and they may come down and endanger the 
house. Harness the horses, Elbridge, and take all the family 
.away. Miss Darley will go to the Institute; the others will 
pass the night at the Mountain House. I shall stay here, 
myself ; it is not at all likely that anything will come of these 
warnings ; but if there should, I choose to be here and take 
:my chance.” 

It needs little, generally, to frighten servants, and they 
were all ready enough to go. The poor relation was one of 
The timid sort, and was terribly uneasy to be got out of the 
house. This left no alternative, of course, for Helen, but 
to go also. They all urged upon Dudley Venner to go with 
Them: if there was danger, why should he remain to risk it, 
"when he sent away the others? 

Old Sophy said nothing until the time came for her to go 
with the second of Elbridge’s carriage-loads. 

“ Come, Sophy,” said Dudley Yenner, “ get your things and 
:go. They will take good care of you at the Mountain House ; 
and when we have made sure that there is no real danger, 
.you shall come back at once.” 

“ Ho, Massa ! ” Sophy answered. “ I’ve seen Elsie into tlT 
rground, ’n’ I a’n’t goin’ away to come back ’n’ fin’ Massa Y en- 
ner buried under th’ rocks. My darlin’ ’s gone; ’n’ now, if 
Massa goes, ’n’ th’ oY place goes, it’s time for 01’ Sophy to 
go, too. Ho, Massa Yenner, we’ll both stay in th’ ol’ man- 
sion ’n’ wait for th’ Lord ! ” 

Hothing could change the old woman’s determination ; and 
ier master, who only feared, but did not really expect the 
long-deferred catastrophe, was obliged to consent to her stay- 


340 


ELSIE VENNER. 


ing. The sudden drying of the well at such a time was the. 
most alarming sign ; for he remembered that the same thing- 
had been observed just before great mountain-slides. This 
long rain, too, was just the kind of cause which was likely 
to loosen the strata of rock piled up in the ledges; if the 
dreaded event should ever come to pass, it would be at such a 
time. 

He paced his chamber uneasily until long past midnight.. 
If the morning came without accident, he meant to have a 
careful examination made of all the rents and fissures above, 
of their direction and extent, and especially whether, in case 
of a mountain-slide, the huge masses would be like to reach 
so far to the east and so low down the declivity as the man- 
sion. 

At two o’clock in the morning he was dozing in his chair. 
Old Sophy had lain down on her bed, and was muttering in 
troubled dreams. 

All at once a loud crash seemed to rend the very heavens 
above them: a crack as of the thunder that follows close 
upon the bolt, — a rending and crushing as of a forest snapped 
through all its stems, torn, twisted, splintered, dragged 
with all its ragged boughs into one chaotic ruin. The 
ground trembled under them as in an earthquake; the old 
mansion shuddered so that all the windows clattered in their 
casements; the great chimney shook off its cap-stones, which 
came down on the roof with resounding concussions; and the 
echoes of The Mountain roared and bellowed in long redu- 
plication, as if its whole foundations were rent, and this were 
the terrible voice of its dissolution. 

Dudley Venner rose from his chair, folded his arms, and 
awaited his fate. There was no knowing where to look for 
safety; and he remembered too well the story of the family 
that was lost by rushing out of the house, and so hurrying 
into the very jaws of death. 

He had stood thus but for a moment, when he heard the 
voice of Old Sophy in a wild cry of terror: — 

“ It’s th’ Las’ Day! It’s th’ Las’ Day! The Lord is. 
cornin’ to take us all ! ” 

“ Sophy ! ” he called ; but she did not hear him or heed 
him, and rushed out of the house. 

The worst danger was over. If they were to be destroyed,,, 
it would necessarily be in a few seconds from the first thrill: 


THE GOLDEN CORD IS LOOSED. 341 

of the terrible convulsion. He waited in awful suspense, 
but calm. Hot more than one or two minutes could have 
passed before the frightful tumult and all its sounding 
echoes had ceased. He called Old Sophy; but she did not 
answer. He went to the western window and looked forth 
into the darkness. He could not distinguish the outlines of 
the landscape, but the white stone was clearly visible, and 
by its side the new-made mound. Hay, what was that which 
obscured its outline, in shape like a human figure ? He flung 
open the window and sprang through. It was all that there 
was left of poor Old Sophy, stretched out lifeless, upon her 
darling’s grave. 

He had scarcely composed her limbs and drawn the sheet 
over her, when the neighbors began to arrive from all direc- 
tions. Each was expecting to hear of houses overwhelmed 
and families destroyed ; but each came with the story that his 
own household was safe. It was not until- the morning 
dawned that the true nature and extent of the sudden move- 
ment was ascertained. A great seam had opened above the 
long cliff, and the terrible Rattlesnake Ledge, with all its 
envenomed reptiles, its dark fissures and black caverns, was 
buried forever beneath a mighty incumbent mass of ruin. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


MR. SILAS PECKHAM RENDERS HIS ACCOUNT. 

The morning rose clear and bright. The long storm wasr 
over, and the calm autumnal sunshine was now to return, 
with all its infinite repose and sweetness. With the earliest 
dawn exploring parties were out in every direction along the 
southern slope of The Mountain, tracing the ravages of the 
great slide and the track it had followed. It proved to be 
not so much a slide as the breaking off and falling of a vast, 
line of cliff, including the dreaded Ledge. It had folded 
over like the leaves of a half-opened book when they close, 
crushing the trees below, piling its ruins in a glacis at the 
foot of what had been the overhanging wall of the cliff, and 
filling up that deep cavity above the mansion-house which 
bore the ill-omened name of Dead Man’s Hollow. This it 
was which had saved the Dudley mansion. The falling 
masses, or huge fragments breaking off from them, would 
have swept the house and all around it to destruction but 
for this deep shelving dell, into which the stream of ruin 
was happily directed. It was, indeed, one of Nature’s con- 
servative revolutions; for the fallen masses made a kind of 
shelf, which interposed a level break between the inclined 
planes above and below it, so that the nightmare-fancies of 
the dwellers in the Dudley mansion, and in many other 
residences under the shadow of The Mountain, need not 
keep them lying awake hereafter to listen for the snapping 
of roots and the splitting of the rocks above them. 

Twenty-four hours after the falling of the cliff, it seemed 
as if it had happened ages ago. The new fact had fitted it- 
self in with all the old predictions, forebodings, fears, and 
acquired the solidarity belonging to all events which have 
slipped out of the fingers of Time and dissolved in the ante- 
cedent eternity. 

Old Sophy was lying dead in the Dudley mansion. If 
there were tears shed for her they could not be bitter ones; 
for she had lived out her full measure of days, and gone — 


MR. SILAS PECKHAM RENDERS HIS ACCOUNT. 34£ 

who could help fondly believing it? — to rejoin her belovedv 
mistress. They made a place for her at the foot of the two 
mounds. It was thus she would have chosen to sleep, and 
not to have wronged her humble devotion in life by asking- 
to lie at the side of those whom she had served so long and 
faithfully. There were very few present at the simple cere- 
mony. Helen Darley was one of these few. The old black 
woman had been her companion in all the kind offices of 
which she had been the ministering angel to Elsie. 

After it was all over, Helen was leaving with the rest, when 
Dudley Venner begged her to stay a little, and he would send 
her back : it was a long walk ; besides, he wished to say some’ 
things to her, which he had not had the opportunity of speak- 
ing. Of course Helen could not refuse him; there must be- 
many thoughts coming into his mind which he would wish, 
to share with her who had known his daughter so long and 
been with her in her last days. 

She returned into the great parlor with the wrought cor- 
nices and the medallion-portraits on the ceiling. 

“ I am now alone in the world,” Dudley Venner said. 

Helen must have known that before he spoke. But the 
tone in which he said it had so much meaning, that she could 
not find a word to answer him with. They sat in silence,, 
which the old tall clock counted out in long seconds ; but it 
was silence which meant more than any words they had ever- 
spoken. 

“ Alone in the world. Helen, the freshness of my life is- 
gone, and there is little left of the few graces which in my 
younger days might have fitted me to win the love of women. 
Listen to me, — kindly, if you can ; forgive me, at least. Half* 
my life has been passed in constant fear and anguish, with- 
out any near friend to share my trials. My task is done- 
now; my fears have ceased to prey upon me; the sharpness 
of early sorrows has yielded something of its edge to time.. 
You have bound me to you by gratitude in the tender care 
you have taken of my poor child. More than this. I must 
tell you all now, out of the depth of this trouble through 
which I am passing. I have loved you from the moment we 
first met; and if my life has anything left worth accepting,, 
it is yours. Will you take the offered gift? ” 

Helen looked in his face, surprised, bewildered. 

u This is not for me, — not for me,” she said. “ I am but; 


'344 


ELSIE VENNER. 


a poor faded flower, not worth the gathering of such a one as 
you. No, no, — I have been bred to humble toil all my days, 
and I could not be to you what you ought to ask. I am ac- 
customed to a kind of loneliness and self-dependence. I 
have seen nothing, almost, of the world, such as you were 
bom to move in. Leave me to my obscure place and duties ; 
I shall at least have peace ; — and you — you will surely find in 
due time someone better fitted by Nature and training to 
make you happy.” 

“No, Miss Darley!” Dudley Venner said, almost sternly. 
“ You must not speak to a man who has lived through my 
experiences, of looking about for a new choice after his heart 
has once chosen. Say that you can never love me; say that 
I have lived too long to share your young life; say that sor- 
row has left nothing in me for Love to find his pleasure in ; 
but do not mock me with the hope of a new affection for 
some unknown object. The first look of yours brought me to 
your side. The first tone of your voice sunk into my heart. 
From this moment my life must wither out or bloom anew. 
My home is desolate. Come under my roof and make it 
bright once more, — share my life with me, — or I shall give 
the halls of the old mansion to the bats and the owls, and 
wander forth alone, without a hope or a friend ! ” 

To find herself with a man’s future at the disposal of a 
single word of hers ! — a man like this, too, with a fascination 
for her against which she had tried to shut her heart, feeling 
that he lived in another sphere than hers, working as she 
was for her bread, a poor operative in the factory of a hard 
master and jealous overseer, the salaried drudge of Mr. Silas 
Peckham! Why, she had thought he was grateful to her 
as a friend of his daughter ; she had even pleased herself with 
the feeling that he liked her, in her humble place, as a 
woman of some cultivation and many sympathetic points of 
relation with himself ; but that he loved her, — that this deep, 
fine nature, in a man so far removed from her in outward 
circumstances, should have found its counterpart in one 
whom life had treated so coldly as herself, — that Dudley 
Yenner should stake his happiness on a breath of hers, — 
poor Helen Darley’s, — it was all a surprise, a confusion, a 
kind of fear not wholly fearful. Ah, me ! women know what 
it is, — that mist over the eyes, that trembling in the limbs, 
that faltering of the voice, that sweet, shame-faced, un- 


MR. SILA« PECKHAM RENDERS HIS ACCOUNT. 345 

spoken confession of weakness which does not wish to be; 
strong, that sudden overflow in the soul where thoughts 
loose their hold on each other and swim single and helpless-, 
in the flood of emotion, — women know what it is ! 

No doubt she was a little frightened and a good deal be- 
wildered, and that her sympathies were warmly excited for 
a friend to whom she had been brought so near, and whose- 
loneliness she saw and pitied. She lost that calm self-pos- 
session she had hoped to maintain. 

“ If I thought that I could make you happy, — -if I should 
speak from my heart and not my reason, — I am but a weak 
woman, — yet if I can be to you What can I say ? ” 

What more could this poor, dear Helen say? 

“ Elbridge, harness the horses and take Miss Darley back, 
to the school.” 

What conversation had taken place since Helen’s rhetori- 
cal failure is not recorded in the minutes from which this', 
narrative is constructed. But when the man who had been 
summoned had gone to-get the carriage ready, Helen resumed 
something she had been speaking of. 

. “Not for the world. Everything must go on just as it. 
has gone on, for the present. There are proprieties to be^ 
consulted. I cannot be hard with you, that out of your very 
affliction has sprung this — this — well — you must name it for- 
me, — but the world will never listen to explanations. I am to- 
be Helen Darley, lady assistant in Mr. Silas Peckham’s- 
school, as long as I see fit to hold my office. And I mean to 
attend to my scholars just as before; so that I shall have 
very little time for visiting or seeing company. I believe,, 
though, you are one of the Trustees and a Member of the 
Examining Committee; so that, if you should happen to- 
visit the school, I shall try to be civil to you.” 

Every lady sees, of course, that Helen was quite right; 
but perhaps here and there one will think that Dudley Ven- 
ner was all wrong, — that he was too hasty, — that he should 1 
have been too full of his recent grief for such a confession 
as he has just made, and the passion from which it sprung. 
Perhaps they do not understand the sudden recoil of a strong- 
nature long compressed. Perhaps they have not studied the- 
mystery of allotropism in the emotions of the human heart. 
Go to the nearest chemist and ask him to show you some of 


.346 


ELSIE VENNER. 


the dark-red phosphorus which will not burn without fierce 
heating, but at 500°, Fahrenheit, changes back again to the 
inflammable substance we know so well. Grief seems more 
like ashes than like fire; but as grief has been love once, so 
it may become love again. This is emotional allotropism. 

Helen rode back to the Institute and inquired for Mr. 
Peckham. She had not seen him during the brief interval 
between her departure from the mansion-house and her re- 
turn to Old Sophy’s funeral. There were various questions 
about the school she wished to ask. 

“Oh, how’s your haalth, Miss Darley?” Silas began. 
*“ We’ve missed you consid’able. Glad to see you back at the 
post of dooty. Hope the Squire treated you hahnsomely, — 
liberal pecooniary compensation, — hey? A’n’t much of a 
loser, I guess, by acceptin’ his propositions?” 

Helen blushed at this last question, as if Silas had meant 
something by it beyond asking what money she had received; 
but his own double-meaning expression and her blush were 
too nice points for him to have taken cognizance of. He was 
engaged in a mental calculation as to the amount of the de- 
duction he should make under the head of “ demage to the 
institootion,” — this depending somewhat on that of the 
“pecooniary compensation ” she might have received for her 
services as the friend of Elsie Venner. 

So Helen slid back at once into her routine, the same 
faithful, patient creature she had always been. But what 
was this new light which seemed to have kindled in her 
• eyes? What was this look of peace, which nothing could 
disturb, which smiled serenely through all the little mean- 
nesses with which the daily life of the educational factory 
surrounded her, — which not only made her seem resigned, 
but overflowed all her features with a thoughtful, subdued 
happiness ? Mr. Bernard did not know, — perhaps he did not 
guess. The inmates of the Dudley mansion were not scan- 
dalized by the mysterious visits of a veiled or unveiled lady. 
The vibrating tongues of the “ female youth ” of the Insti- 
tute were not set in motion by the standing of an equipage 
Sit the gate, waiting for their lady teacher. The servants at 
the mansion did not convey numerous letters with superscrip- 
tions in a bold, manly hand, sealed with the arms of a well- 
Fnown house, and directed to Miss Helen Darley; nor, on 
the other hand, did Hiram, the man from the lean streak in 


MR. SILAS PECKHAM RENDERS HIS ACCOUNT. 34 T 

New Hampshire, carry sweet-smelling, rose-hued, many- 
layered, criss-crossed, fine-stitch-lettered packages of note- 
paper directed to Dudley Venner, Esq., and all too scanty to 
hold that incredible expansion of tjae famous three words- 
which a woman was born to say, — that perpetual miracle^ 
which astonishes all the go-betweens who wear their shoes, 
out in carrying a woman’s infinite variations on the theme,. 
“ I love you.” 

But the reader must remember that there are walks in. 
country-towns where people are liable to meet by accident, 
and that the hollow of an old tree has served the purpose of 
a post-office sometimes; so that he has her choice (to divide 
the pronouns impartially) of various hypotheses to account 
for the new glory of happiness which seemed to have ir- 
radiated our poor Helen’s features, as if her dreary life, 
were awakening in the dawn of a blessed future. 

With all the alleviations which have been hinted at, Mr„ 
Dudley Venner thought that the days and the weeks had 
never moved so slowly as through the last period of the au- 
tumn that was passing. Elsie had been a perpetual source 
of anxiety to him, but still she had been a companion. He 
could not mourn for her; for he felt that she was safer with 
her mother, in that world where there are no more sorrows 
and dangers, than she could have been with him. But as 
he sat at his window and looked at the three mounds, the 
loneliness of the great house made it seem more like the 
sepulcher than these narrow dwellings where his beloved and 
her daughter lay close to each other, side by side, — Cata- 
lina, the bride of his youth, and Elsie, the child whom he 
had nurtured, with poor Old Sophy, who had followed them 
like a black shadow, at their feet, under the same soft turf, 
sprinkled with the brown autumnal leaves. It was not good' 
for him to be thus alone. How should he ever live through. 
the long months of November and December? 

The months of November and December did, in some way- 
or other, get rid of themselves at last, bringing with them: 
the usual events of village-life and a few unusual ones. 
Some of the geologists had been up to look at the great slide,, 
of which they gave those prolix accounts which everybody' 
remembers who read the scientific journals of the time. The 
engineers reported that there was little probability of any- 
further convulsion along the line of rocks which overhung; 


ELSIE VENNER. 


348 

the more thickly settled part of the town. The naturalists 
drew up a paper on the “ Probable Extinction of the Crotalus 
Durissus in the Township of Rockland.” The engagement 
of the Widow Rowens to a Little Millionville merchant was 
announced, — “ Sudding n’ onexpected,” Widow Leech said, 
— “ waiilthy, or she wouldn’t ha’ looked at him, — fifty year 
old, if he is a day, ’n’ ha’n’t got a white hair in his head.” 
The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had publicly announced 
that he was going to join the Roman Catholic communion, — 
not so much to the surprise or consternation of the religious 
world as he had supposed. Several old ladies forthwith pro- 
claimed their intention of following him; but, as one or two 
nf them were deaf, and another had been threatened with an 
attack of that mild, but obstinate complaint, dementia 
senilis, many thought it was not so much the force of his 
arguments as a kind of tendency to jump as the bellwether 
jumps, well known in flocks not included in the Christian 
fold. His bereaved congregation immediately began pull- 
ing candidates on and off, like new boots, on trial. Some 
pinched in tender places ; some were too loose ; some were too 
square-toed; some were too coarse, and didn’t please; some 
were too thin, and wouldn’t last; — in short, they couldn’t 
possibly find a fit. At last people began to drop in to hear 
old Doctor Honeywood. They were quite surprised to find 
what a human old gentleman he was, and went back and told 
the others, that, instead of being a case of confluent 
sectarianism, as they supposed, the good old minister had 
been so well vaccinated with charitable virus that he was 
now a true, open-souled Christian of the mildest type. The 
■end of all which was, that the liberal people went over to the 
old minister almost in a body, just at the time that Deacon 
Shearer and the “ Vinegar-Bible ” party split off, and that 
not long afterwards they sold their own meeting-house to 
i;he malcontents, so that Deacon Soper used often to remind 
Colonel Sprowle of his wish that “ our little man and him 
[the Reverend Doctor] would swop pulpits,” and tell him it 
had “pooty nigh come trew.” But this is anticipating the 
course of events, which were much longer in coming about; 
for we have but just got through that terrible long month, 
as Mr. Dudley Venner found it, of December. 

On the first of January Mr. Silas Peckham was in the 
labit of settling his quarterly accounts, and making such 


MR. SILAS PECKHAM RENDERS HIS ACCOUNT. 349 


new arrangements as his convenience or interest dictated. 
New Year was a holiday at the Institute. No doubt this ac- 
counted for Helen’s being dressed so charmingly, — always, 
to be sure, in her own simple way, but yet with such a true: 
lady’s air, that she looked fit to be the mistress of any man- 
sion in the land. 

She was in the parlor alone, a little before noon, when Mr. 
Peckham came in. 

“ I’m ready to settle my accaount with you now, Miss Dar- 
ley,” said Silas. 

“ As you please, Mr. Peckham,” Helen answered, very 
graciously. 

“ Before payin’ you your selary,” the Principal continued. 
“ I wish to come to an understandin’ as to the futur’. I con- 
sider that I’ve been payin’ high, very high, for the work 
you do. Women’s wages can’t be expected to do more than 
feed and clothe ’em, as a gineral thing, with a little savin’, 
in case of sickness, and to bury ’em, if they break daown, as. 
all of ’em are liable to do at any time. If I a’n’t misin- 
formed, you not only support vourself out of my establish- 
ment, but likewise relatives of yours, who I don’t know that 
I’m called upon to feed and clothe. There is a young 
woman, not burdened with destitute relatives, has signified 
that she would be glad to take your dooties for less pecoon- 
iary compensation, by a consid’able amaount, than you now 
receive. I shall be willin’, however, to retain your services at 
sech redooced rate as we shall fix upon, — provided sech re- 
dooced rate be as low or lower than the same services can be: 
obtained elsewhere.” 

“ As you please, Mr. Peckham,” Helen answered, with a 
smile so sweet that the Principal (who of course had trumped 
up this opposition-teacher for the occasion) said to himself 
she would stand being cut down a quarter, perhaps a half, of 
her salary. 

“ Here is your accaount, Miss Darley, and the balance 
doo you,” said Silas Peckham, handing her a paper and a 
small roll of infectious-flavored bills wrapping six poisonous 
coppers of the old coinage. 

She took the paper and began looking at it. She could 
not quite make up her mind to touch the feverish bills with: 
Ihe cankering coppers in them, and left them airing them- 
selves on the table. 


:350 


ELSIE VENDER. 


The document she held ran as follows: 


< Silas PecJcham, Esq . , Principal of the Apollinean Institute , 

In Account with Helen Parley , Assist. Teacher. 

Cr. 


Pr. 

To Salary for quarter 
endiug Jan. 1, @ 

$75 per quarter . . . $75.00 


$75.00 

Rockland, Jan. 1, 1859. 


By Deduction for absence, 1 

week 3 days 

“ Board, lodging, etc., for 10 
days, @ 75 cts. per day, . 
“ Damage to Institution by 
absence of teacher from 

duties, say 

“ Stationery furnished . . 

“ Postage-stamp 

“ Balance due Helen Darley . 


$75.00 


$10.00 

7.50 


25.00 

.43 

.01 

32.06 


Now Helen had her own private reasons for wishing to re- 
ceive the small sum which was due her at this time without 
.any unfair deduction — reasons which we need not inquire 
into too particularly, as we may be very sure that they were 
right and womanly. So, when she looked over this account 
of Mr. Silas Peckham’s, and saw that he had contrived to 
pare down her salary to something less than half its stipu- 
lated amount, the look which her countenance wore was as 
near to that of righteous indignation as her gentle features 
and soft blue eyes would admit of its being. 

“ Why, Mr. Peckham,” she said, “ do you mean this ? If 
I am of so much value to you that you must take off twenty- 
five dollars for ten days’ absence, how is it that my salary 
is to be cut down to less than seventy-five dollars a quarter, 
if I remain here ? ” 

“ I gave you fair notice,” said Silas. “ I have a minute 
of it I took down immed’ately after the intervoo.” 

He lugged out his large pocket-book with the strap going 
all round it, and took from it a slip of paper which con- 
firmed his statement. 

“ Besides,” he added slyly, “ I presoom you have received 
a liberal pecooniary compensation from Squire Venner for 
nussin’ his daughter.” 

Helen was looking over the bill while he was speaking. 

“ Board and lodging for ten days, Mr. Peckham — whoso 
Aboard and lodging, pray ? ” 


MR. SILAS PECKHAM RENDERS HIS ACCOUNT. 351 

The door opened before Silas Peckham could answer, and 
Mr. Bernard walked into the parlor. Helen was holding the 
bill in her hand, looking as any woman ought to look who 
Las been at once wronged and insulted. 

“ The last turn of the thumbscrew ! ” said Mr. Bernard to 
himself. “What is it, Helen? You look troubled.” 

She handed him the account. 

He looked at the footing of it. Then he looked at the 
items. Then he looked at Silas Peckham. 

At this moment Silas was sublime. He was so trans- 
cendency unconscious of the emotions going on in Mr. 
Bernard’s mind at the moment, that he had only a single 
thought. 

“The accaount’s correc’ly cast, I presoom; — if the’ ’s any 
mistake of figgers or addin’ ’em up, it’ll be made all right. 
Everything’s accordin’ to agreement. The minute written 
immed’ately after the intervoo is here in my possession.” 

Mr. Bernard looked at Helen. Just what would have hap- 
pened to Silas Peckham, as he stood then and There, but for 
the interposition of a merciful Providence, nobody knows 
or ever will know ; for at that moment steps were heard upon 
The stairs, and Hiram threw open the parlor-door for Mr. 
Dudley Venner to enter. 

He saluted them all gracefully with the good wishes of the 
season, and each of them returned his compliment, — Helen 
blushing fearfully, of course, but not particularly noticed in 
her embarrassment by more than one. 

Silas Peckham reckoned with perfect confidence on hie 
Trustees, who had always said what he told them to, and 
done what he wanted. It was a good chance now to show 
off his power, and, by letting his instructors know the un- 
stable tenure of their offices, make it easier to settle his 
accounts and arrange his salaries. There was nothing very 
strange in Mr. Venner’s calling; he was one of the Trustees., 
and this was New Year’s Day. But he had called just at 
the lucky moment for Mr. Peckham’s object. 

“ I have thought some of makin’ changes in the depart- 
ment of instruction,” he began. “ Several accomplished 
teachers have applied to me, who would be glad of sitooa- 
tions. I understand that there never have been so many 
fust-rate teachers, male and female, out of employment as 
doorin’ the present season. If I can make sahtisfahctory 


352 


ELSIE VENNER. 


arrangements with my present corpse of teachers, I shall be 
glad to do so; otherwise I shell, with the permission of the 
Trustees, make sech noo arrangements as circumstahnces 
compel.” 

“ You may make arrangements for a new assistant in my 
department, Mr. Peckham,” said Mr. Bernard, “ at once, — 
this day, — this hour. I am not safe to be trusted with your 
person five minutes out of this lady’s presence, — of whom I 
beg pardon for this strong language. Mr. Venner, I must 
beg you, as one of the Trustees of this institution, to look at. 
the manner in which its Principal has attempted to swindle 
this faithful teacher, whose toils and sacrifices and self-devo- 
tion to the school have made it all that it is, in spite of this 
miserable trader’s incompetence. Will you look at the 
paper I hold ? ” 

Dudley Venner took the account and read it through, 
without changing a feature. Then he turned to Silas: 
Peckham. 

“You may make arrangements for a new assistant in the- 
branches this lady has taught. Miss Helen Darley is to be 
my wife. I had hoped to have announced this news in a less 
abrupt and ungraceful manner. But I came to tell you. 
with my own lips what you would have learned before even- 
ing from my friends in the village.” 

Mr. Bernard went to Helen, who stood silent, with down- 
cast eyes, and took her hand warmly, hoping she might find 
all the happiness she deserved. Then he turned to Dudley 
Venner, and said, — 

“ She is a queen, but has never found it out. The world 
has nothing nobler than this dear woman, whom you have- 
discovered in the disguise of a teacher. God bless her and 
you ! ” 

Dudley Venner returned his friendly grasp, without an- 
swering a word in articulate speech. 

Silas remained dumb and aghast for a brief space. Com- 
ing to himself a little, he thought there might have been 
some mistake about the items, — would like to have Miss; 
Darley’s bill returned, — would make it all right, — had no 
idee that Squire Venner had a special int’rest in Miss 
Darley, — was sorry he had given offense, — if he might take 
that bill and look it over 

“No, Mr. Peckham,” said Mr. Dudley Venner; “there: 


MR. SILAS PECKHAM RENDERS HIS ACCOUNT. 353 

will be a full meeting of the Board next week, and the bill, 
and such evidence with reference to the management of the 
Institution and the treatment of its instructors as Mr. Lang- 
don sees fit to bring forward will be laid before them.” 

Miss Helen Darley became that very day the guest of Miss 
Arabella Thornton, the Judge’s daughter. Mr. Bernard 
made his appearance a week or two later at the Lectures, 
where the Professor first introduced him to the reader. 

He stayed after the class had left the room. 

“ Ah, Mr. Langdon! how do you do? Very glad to see you 
back again. How have you been since our correspondence 
on Fascination and other curious scientific questions?” 

It was the Professor who spoke, — whom the reader will 
recognize as myself, the teller of this story. 

“ I have been well,” Mr. Bernard answered, with a serious 
look which invited a further question. 

“ I hope you have had none of those painful or dangerous 
experiences you seemed to be thinking of when you wrote; 
at any rate you have escaped having your obituary written*” 

“ I have seen some things worth remembering. Shall I 
call on you this evening and tell you about them ? ” 

“ I shall be most happy to see you.” 

This was the way in which I, the Professor, became ac- 
quainted with some of the leading events of this story. 
They interested me sufficiently to lead me to avail myself of 
all those other extrordinary methods of obtaining informa- 
tion well known to writers of narrative. 

Mr. Langdon seemed to me to have gained in seriousness 
and strength of character by his late experiences. He threw 
Lis whole energies into his studies with an effect which dis- 
tanced all his previous efforts. Remembering my former 
hint, he employed his spare hours in writing for the annual 
prizes, both of which he took by a unanimous vote of the 
judges. Those who heard him read his Thesis at the 
Medical Commencement will not soon forget the impression 
made by his fine personal appearance and manners, nor the 
universal interest excited in the audience, as he read, with 
his beautiful enunciation, that striking paper entitled “ Un- 
resolved Nebulas in Vital Science.” It was a general remark 
of the Faculty, — and old Doctor Kittredge, who had come 
down on purpose to hear Mr. Langdon, heartily agreed to 


354 


ELSIE VENNER. 

it, — that there had never been a diploma filled up, since the 
institution which conferred upon him the degree of Doctor 
Medicinse was founded, which carried with it more of 
promise to the profession than that which bore the name of 


BERN AUDITS CARYL LANGDON. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


< 


CONCLUSION. 

Mr. Bernard Langdon had no sooner taken his degree, 
than, in accordance with the advice of one of his teachers 
whom he frequently consulted, he took an office in the heart 
of the city where he had studied. He had thought of be- 
ginning in a suburb or some remoter district of the city 
proper. 

“ No,” said his teacher, — to wit, myself, — “ don’t do any 
such thing. You are made for the best kind of practice; 
don’t hamper yourself with an outside constituency, such as 
belongs to a practitioner of the second class. When a fellow 
like you chooses his beat, he must look ahead a little. Take 
*care of all the poor that apply to you, but leave the half- 
pay classes to a different style of doctor, — the people who 
spend one half their time in taking care of their patients, 
and the other half in squeezing out their money. Go for 
the swell-fronts and south-exposure houses; the folks inside 
.are just as good as other people, and the pleasantest, on the 
whole, to take care of. They must have somebody, and they 
like a gentleman best. Don’t throw yourself away. You 
have a good presence and pleasing manners. You wear 
■white linen by inherited instinct. You can pronounce the 
word view. You have all the elements of success; go and 
take it. Be polite and generous, but don’t undervalue your- 
self. You will be useful, at any rate; you may just as well 
he happy, while you are about it. The highest social class 
furnishes incomparably the best patients, taking them by 
•and large. Besides, when they won’t get well and bore you 
to death, you can send ’em off to travel. Mind me now, and 
take the tops of your sparrowgrass. Somebody must have 
’em, — why shouldn’t you? If you don’t take your chance, 
you’ll get the butt-ends as a matter of course.” 

Mr. Bernard talked like a young man full of noble senti- 
ments. He wanted to be useful to his fellow-beings. Their 
social differences were nothing to him. He would never 


355 


356 


ELSIE VENNER. 


court the rich, — he would go where he was called. He would 
rather save the life of a poor mother of a family than that 
of half a dozen old gouty millionaires whose heirs had been 
yawning and stretching these ten years to get rid of them. 

“ Generous emotions ! ” I exclaimed. “ Cherish ’em ; cling 
to ’em till you are fifty, till you are seventy, till you are 
ninety! But do as I tell you, — strike for the best circle of 
practice, and you’ll be sure to get it ! ” 

Mr. Langdon did as I told him, — took a genteel office,, 
furnished it neatly, dressed with a certain elegance, soon 
made a pleasant circle of acquaintances, and began to work 
his way into the right kind of business. I missed him,, 
however, for some days, not long after he had opened his- 
office. On his return, he told me he had been up at Rock- 
land by special invitation, to attend the wedding of Mr. 
Dudley Venner and Miss Helen Darley. He gave me a full 
account of the ceremony, which I regret that I cannot relate 
in full. “ Helen looked like an angel,” — that, I am sure, 
was one of his expressions. As for dress, I should like 
to give the details, but am afraid of committing blunders, 
as men always do, when they undertake to describe such, 
matters. White dress, anyhow, — that I am sure of, — with 
orange-flowers, and the most wonderful lace veil that was. 
ever seen or heard of. The Reverend Doctor Honey wood 
performed the ceremony, of course. The good people 
seemed to have forgotten they ever had had any other min- 
ister, — except Deacon Shearer and his set of malcontents, 
who were doing a dull business in the meeting-house lately^ 
occupied by the Reverend Mr. Fairweather. 

“ Who was at the wedding ? ” 

“ Everybody, pretty much. They wanted to keep it quiet, 
but it was of no use. Married at church. Front pews, old 
Doctor Kittredge and all the mansion-house people and dis- 
tinguished strangers, — Colonel Sprowle and family, includ- 
ing Matilda’s young gentleman, a graduate of one of the- 
fresh- water colleges, — Mrs. Pickins (late Widow Rowens) 
and husband, — Deacon Soper and numerous parishioners. 
A little nearer the door, Abel, the Doctor’s man, and El- 
bridge, who drove them to church in the family-coach. 
Father Fairweather, as they all call him now, came in late 
with Father McShane.” 


CONCLUSION. 


357 


'“And Silas Peckham?” 

“ Oh, Silas had left The School and Rockland. Cut up 
altogether too badly in the examination instituted by the 
Trustees. Had removed over to Tamarack, and thought of 
Tenting a large house and ‘ farming ’ the town-poor.” 

Some time after this, as I was walking with a young friend 
along by the swell-fronts and south-exposures, whom should 
1 see but Mr. Bernard Langdon, looking remarkably happy, 
and keeping step by the side of a very handsome and singu- 
larly well-dressed young lady! He bowed and lifted his hat 
as we passed. 

“ Who is that pretty girl my young doctor has got there ? ” 

I said to my companion. 

“ Who is that ? ” he answered. “ You don’t know ? Why, 
that is neither more or less than Miss Letitia Forrester, 
daughter of — of — why, the great banking-firm, you know, 
Bilyuns Brothers & Forrester. Got acquainted with her in 
the country, they say. There’s a story that they’re engaged, 
or like to be, if the firm consents.” 

“Oh!” I said. ‘ ■ & 

I did not like the look of it in the least. Too young, — too 
young. Has not taken any position yet. No right to ask 
for the hand of Bilyuns Brothers & Co.’s daughter. Besides, 
it will spoil him for practice, if he marries a rich girl before 
"he has formed habits of work. 

I looked in at his office the next day. A box of white kids 
was lying open on the table. A three-cornered note, directed 
in a very delicate lady’s-hand, was distinguishable among a 
heap of papers. I was just going to call him to account for 
his proceedings, when he pushed the three-cornered note 
aside and took up a letter with a great corporation-seal upon 
it. He had received the offer of a professor’s chair in an 
ancient and distinguished institution. 

“ Pretty well for three-and-twenty, my boy,” I said. “ I 
suppose you’ll think you must be married one of these days, 
if you accept this office.” 

Mr. Langdon blushed. There had been stories about him, 
he knew. His name had been mentioned in connection with 
that of a very charming young lady. The current reports 
were not true. He had met this young lady, and been much 
^pleased with her, in the country, at the house of her grand- 


358 


ELSIE VENNER. 


father, the Reverend Doctor Honeywood, — you remember 
Miss Letitia Forrester, whom I have mentioned repeatedly? 
On coming to town, he found his country-acquaintance in a 
social position which seemed to discourage his continued 
intimacy. He had discovered, however, that he was a not 
unwelcome visitor, and had kept up friendly relations with 
her. But there was no truth in the current reports, — none 
at all. 

Some months had passed, after this visit, when I hap- 
pened one evening to stroll into a box in one of the principal 
theaters of the city. A small party sat on the seats before 
me; a middle-aged gentleman and his lady, in front, and 
directly behind them my young doctor and the same very 
handsome young lady I had seen him walking with on the 
sidewalk before the swell-fronts and south-exposures. As 
Professor Langdon seemed to be very much taken up with 
his companion and both of them looked as if they were en- 
joying themselves, I determined not to make my presence 
known to my young friend, and to withdraw quietly after 
feasting my eyes with the sight of them for a few minutes. 

“ It looks as if something might come of it,” I said to 
myself. At that moment the young lady lifted her arm ac- 
cidentally in such a way that the light fell upon the clasp 
of a chain which encircled her wrist. My eyes filled with 
tears as I read upon the clasp, in sharp-cut Italic letters, 
E. V. They were tears at once of sad remembrance and of 
joyous anticipation'; for the ornament on which I looked 
was the double pledge of a dead sorrow and a living affection. 
It was the golden bracelet, — the parting-gift of Elsie 
Yenner. 


THE END. 






































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